SHENANDOAH, Texas – The Kenyon College men's swimming and diving team enjoyed the second straight day with the overall team points lead at the 2013 NCAA Division III Swimming and Diving Championship. The Lords captured three total national championship titles and swept through both relay competitions and included a dramatic finish to day-two action in the final race of the evening. Kenyon currently tops the charts with 286 team points. Denison trails in second place with 228 points and Massachusetts Institute of Technology rounds out the top three.
In the first of six events on the men's side, the Lords extended an incredible streak of national titles in the 200-yard freestyle relay. The Kenyon quad of Ian Stewart-Bates, Austin Caldwell, Curtis Ramsey, and Ian Richardson took top honors to win the Lords' first national title of the 2013 Championships. Their time of 1:18.96 was only 0.90 seconds off the mark of their NCAA record-setting performance established in last year's championship. The win earned the team 40 points to their overall total, but more impressively lengthened the program's steak to 13 consecutive titles in the 200 freestyle relay, dating back to 2001. It is the Lords' 18th title in the last 19 years and dating back to 1988, it is their 23rd title in the event over 26 years.
Kenyon closed out the second day of the 2013 National Championship with a come-from-behind victory in the 400-yard medley relay. Going into the final 50 yards, Kenyon trailed event leader Johns Hopkins University by nearly a full second. Stewart-Bates ran a flawless leg of the race to anchor the Lords and closed the gap before surpassing the Blue Jays' anchor, Dylan Coggin. The Kenyon senior completed the comeback as the Lords edged JHU by 0.33 seconds, touching the wall in 3:15.39 for the national title. Jon Rooker, Jimmy Chapman, and Alex Beckwith all shared in the victory. For Rooker and Beckwith, the win represented the first national titles of their careers.
In his second event of the day, Caldwell captured his first individual national championship and narrowly missed the NCAA record in doing so. The sophomore raced out to a strong start in the first lap to create distance from the rest of the field and finished strong with a 1:37.01 finals time, just missing the national record by 0.03 seconds.
Despite Denison gaining a bit of ground on the Lords following the men's three-meter diving competition, the Lords secured their day-two team point lead with several supporting finishes. Chapman took in a second-place finish in the 100-yard butterfly event, only to be bested by MIT's Wyatt Ubellacker who set a new NCAA record in the process. Kevin Magee, Nicholas Charriez, and Ryan Funk earned 11th, 12th, and 15th-place finishes, respectively, to garner 13 more team points in addition to Chapman's 17.
Stewart-Bates added a third place finish in the 200-yard freestyle to his 2013 resume. The senior finished 1.24 seconds behind event winner and teammate Caldwell. That finish marked his 19th career All-American honor before closing the night with his 20th following his part in the 400-yard medley relay win.
Andrew Chevalier placed fifth in the 400-yard individual medley for 14 team points, while freshman Mark Newell placed eighth to give Kenyon an additional 11.
At the midway point of the four-day championship event, Kenyon sits atop the team rankings for the second straight day with 286 total team points. Two-time defending champion Denison rests just 58 points behind the Lords while MIT is third with 204 points. Day three from the Conroe ISD Natatorium will begin with preliminary races starting at 10 a.m. CDT and finals sessions starting at 6 p.m. CDT.
