BRUNSWICK, ME - Junior Jenny Hu (Oakland, MA) of the Tufts women's swimming & diving team won the 100 breaststroke event at the 2013 NESCAC Championship meet on Saturday. She swam an NCAA B qualifying and school-record 1:05.15 time.
Hu's win helped Tufts hold on to fourth place at the conference meet, hosted by Bowdoin. Head coach Nancy Bigelow's team currently has 733.5 points through two days. Amherst moved into first place on Saturday with 1,355.5 total points. Williams is second at 1329.5 and Middlebury is in third with 760.5 points.
Saturday continuned Tufts' success in the breaststrokes at NESCAC's. Hu's time in the 100 broke her own school record of 1:05.78 set last year. It also provisionally qualified her for the NCAA Championships. Junior Taylor Lentz (Edina, MN) was fourth in the 100 breast with another NCAA B mark (1:06 flat).
On Friday, Lentz finished as the runner-up in the 50 breaststroke. She won the preliminary round Friday morning, timing 29.87 seconds. In the final, she was edged by Jamie Hillas from Middlebury 29.82 to 29.90. The Jumbos had four swimmers in the top 13 for the 50 breast, including Hu in fifth with a 30.14 time.
Tufts recorded four total NCAA B performances on Saturday. Senior tri-captain Christine Garvey (West Chester, PA) was four seconds faster in the 400 individual medley final than she was in the preliminary, touching in 4:33.39 for ninth and a B cut. The 800 freestyle relay also put itself in national consideration with a 7:42.20 time swam by Garvey, sophomore Kathryn Coniglio (Branchburg, NJ), senior tri-captain Lizz Grainger (Nashville, TN), and sophomore Samantha Sliwinski (Weymouth, MA). They were fifth.
Sliwinski had set a new 50 freestyle record on Friday's opening day of the meet. Rounding into form after an illness during the season, she timed 24.37 to tie for eighth place with Williams' Catherine Treeth in the 50 free prelims. Sliwinski then went 23.93 in the swim-off to improve upon her own Tufts record. and earn a berth into the conference final. There she was sixth at 24.26 seconds.
The NESCAC meet concludes with a final round of races on Sunday.
Results
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