FRIDAY'S RESULTS  I  CHAMPIONSHIP SITE  I  PHOTOS

SHENANDOAH, Texas – The Kenyon College Ladies crept within 17 points of second-place Williams University on Thursday night. Friday, however, the Ladies went the opposite direction and fell further behind Williams, as well as first-place Emory University, in the 2017 NCAA Division III Women's Swimming & Diving Championship.

Emory won two more event titles in Friday's session and all but sealed the championship. With one day of competition left, the Eagles sit atop the leaderboard with 471.5 points. Williams captured one event title Friday and remains in second place with 327 team points, while Kenyon holds third with 270 points. Denison University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology round out the top five with respective scores of 234 and 141.

The evening opened quietly for the Ladies, who did not have a finalist in the 200-yard butterfly. That left the door open for Williams and Emory to build on their leads. Williams scored three finalists, including race-winner Megan Pierce, who finished in 1:59.76. Emory scored two finalists, while Kenyon's top swimmer was junior Kanchi Desai. She turned in a morning preliminary time of 2:05.77 and took 26th place.

Kenyon tallied its first points of the night when freshman Summer Otazu tied for ninth place with a time of 55.51 in the 100-yard backstroke. While the Ladies celebrated her result, Emory dominated the event with four finalists. The Eagles claimed the top two spots in the race, racked up 54.5 points and ran their overall total to 402.5 points, which was 126.5 points more than Williams and 186.5 more than Kenyon.

The Ladies found more success in the 100-yard breaststroke, as junior Julia Wilson took over third place by clocking in at 1:02.59. She was backed up by senior Laura Duncan who raced to a 13th-place finish in 1:03.91. Wilson's placement netted a 10th career All-American award and was her ninth career top-ten NCAA finish. Duncan's finish yielded her sixth career All-America award.

One-meter diving was up next. The Ladies, with no qualifiers in the event, saw Denison University inch toward their third-place spot in the standings. The Big Red's Allison Fitzgerald took seventh place in the competition and scored 12 points, pulling Denison within 12 points of the Ladies.

Kenyon quickly bounced back and expanded its team lead over Denison by taking second place in the session-ending 800-yard freestyle relay. The Ladies posted a stellar time of 7:15.08, which was better than the existing NCAA record of 7:18.15, however, Emory's relay team edged the Ladies by one-tenth of a second at took another event title in record-breaking fashion. Kenyon's quartet consisted of Julia Green, Delaney Ambrosen, Hannah Orbach-Mandel and Abby Wilson.

The Ladies will finish off the four-day championship meet at Conroe ISD Natatorium tomorrow with a slate of five events. Preliminary heats get underway at 10 a.m. CST and finals kick off at 6 p.m. CST.