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Owen Rood is the fastest 50 freestyler in the NESCAC for 2012
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WILLIAMSTOWN - Tufts senior co-captain Owen Rood (Branford, CT) and sophomore diver Johann Schmidt (Nanuet, NY) both won individual titles on Friday at the NESCAC Men's Swimming & Diving Championships at Williams College on Friday. Following Saturday's results, the Jumbos are in fourth place overall with one day remaining.
Rood won the first individual title of his career. He was a NESCAC champion with the 200 medley relay in 2009 and 2010, but on Friday he added the 50 freestyle championship with a finals time of 20.73 seconds. That is an NCAA B cut, and was 0.20 faster than the 20.93 he swam in the preliminaries to place third. Tufts had four swimmers score in the top 16 for Friday's 50 free.
Schmidt is now 3 for 3 in his career at NESCAC championship events. He won off the one- and three-meter boards as a freshman last year. On Friday, he took his second straight one-meter title with a 496.10 score that is the best ever at Williams' Samuelson-Muir Pool. That is also a national qualifying mark, as was his 486.40 that was tops in the preliminaries.
Rood was also a part of Saturday's Jumbo highlights. He swam the anchor leg in teh 200 medley relay that was fifth with a 1:33.62 time. Sophomores Kyle Savidge (South Windsor, CT), Andrew Turk (Westlake Village, CA) and Eric Douglas (Southbury, CT) were before him.
In the 800 freestyle relay on Saturday, Rood with sophomore Drew Berman (Miami, FL), sophomore Austin Wood (Fort Washington, PA) and senior Alex Strittmatter (Fairfield, CT) placed third with a 6:57.07 time.
Tufts had started the meet on Friday with a bang, swimming the fastest time in the preliminaries of the first event – the 200 freestyle relay. Freshman Will Parker (Frederick, MD), Wood, freshman John Devine (Oxford, MA) and Rood had a 1:23.88 time. Wood and Devine switched spots in the final, Tufts improved its time to 1:23.78, but they dropped to fifth place overall.
The Jumbos finished out a good Friday in the relays with the 400 medley. Savidge, Turk Douglas and Wood finished fifth with a 3:29.64 time in the final.
Douglas had a seventh-place finish for Tufts in the 50 butterfly on Friday, touching in 23.25 seconds. A 4:16.17 in the 400 individual medley by senior Lou Tamposi (Hernando, FL) was eighth on Saturday.Typically a freestyler, Rood switched it up and was seventh in the 100 breaststroke (58.82) on Saturday.
Coach Adam Hoyt's Jumbos finished Saturday with a two-day total of 725 points. That trailed Williams (1,414.5), Amherst (1,362) and Connecticut College (744).
Championship results
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