SATURDAY'S RESULTS  l  CHAMPIONSHIP SITE

GREENSBORO, N.C. – Kenyon College's bid for a record 35th national title was put on hold Saturday after the Denison University Big Red stopped the three-time defending champion Lords and claimed the crown at the 2016 NCAA Division III Men's Swimming and Diving Championship.

For 37 years now, NCAA Division III has known only two men's swimming and diving champions. Kenyon has won the title 34 times since 1980 and Denison has won the title three times in the last six years.

The most recent battle between the heavyweights went back-and-forth until the Big Red took charge for good with 49 unanswered points in Friday's three-meter diving competition. Denison rode that lead out Saturday and finished the meet with a winning total of 455.5 points. Kenyon settled for second place with 418.5 points. Third place went to Emory University with 340.5 points. Johns Hopkins University was fourth with 263 points and Massachusetts Institute of Technology was fifth with 241.5 points.

Kenyon cut into the Denison lead by five points in Saturday's first event, the 1,650-yard freestyle. Junior Arthur Conover claimed a second-place finish in that event by clocking in at 15:11.25, a little less than five seconds off the winning time of 15:06.97 turned in by champion Andrew Greenhalgh of Johns Hopkins University.

Kenyon senior Joey Duronio then nailed down a 12th-place finish with a time of 44.96 in the 100-yard freestyle, but Denison swimmers grabbed 8th- and 11th-place finishes to open up a 40-point lead over Kenyon with just three events remaining.

The Big Red all but sealed the deal in the next event, the 200-yard backstroke. The back-breaker came from Jackson Lindell who took the title in 1:46.10. Denison also got an eighth-place finish, while Kenyon could only counter with a third-place finish from junior Oscar Anderson. He turned in at time of 1:47.47 to produce the best individual-event finish of his NCAA career.

Kenyon was now trailing by 55 points as it headed into the 200-yard breaststroke. The Lords then got the shot in the arm they needed from junior Ian Reardon, who won the event in a Kenyon record time of 1:57.78. It was the Lords' first individual title of the meet and was the first career individual-event title for Reardon, who previously had eight top-ten finishes in NCAA competition. Reardon broke Joey Gosselar's College record of 1:59.38 set in 2007 and became the first Lord to win the national title in the event since Ian Bakk did so in the 2010 season.

In addition to Reardon's result in the 200-yard breaststroke, Kenyon got a tenth-place finish from Trevor Manz and a 13th-place finish from sophomore Matt Leenhouts. Manz hit the wall in 2:01.74, while Leenhouts touched in 2:02.57.

The meet then ended in an uncharacteristic fashion for the Lords. Since 1981, the Kenyon men finished 29 national meets with a title-winning swim in the 400-yard freestyle relay. Saturday morning, however, the Lords failed to qualify for the final heat in the relay. Instead the team of Ryan Funk, Percy Gates, Alex Seaver and Duronio went on to win the consolation final with a ninth-place time of 3:00.13.