RESULTS  I  NCAC CHAMPIONSHIP SITE

GRANVILLE, Ohio – The Kenyon College Lords won the first three events during Friday night's session of the 2020 North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) Swimming and Diving Championship at Trumbull Aquatics Center. They later tacked on two more wins and moved to the top of the team standings with one day of competition left.

The five wins pumped Kenyon's overall team total to 1,316 points. Host Denison University slipped to second place with 1,144 points and Wabash College locked down third place with 850 points. Rounding out the top-five in the nine-team standings were DePauw University with 660 points and The College of Wooster with 553 points.

The first Kenyon win of the evening came from the Lords' 200-yard medley relay team that clocked in with a conference record time of 1:27.42, erasing the old mark of 1:27.99 set by Denison at last year's championship meet. Kenyon's winning foursome included David Fitch, Luis Weekes, Marcus Hong and Cheran De Silva.


Next up was the 400-yard individual medley and Kenyon made it count, claiming four of the top six spots, including Bryan Fitzgerald's first-place finish with an NCAC and pool record time of 3:51.60. He smashed the old NCAC record of 3:54.00 and the pool record of 3:51.86. Mick Bartholomew (3:55.12) placed second for the Lords, followed by Mark Lang (3:56.98), who took fourth place and then Colin Reardon (3:59.47), who took sixth place. Kenyon tallied 168 team points in the event and pulled ahead of Denison in the standings, 818-769.

The Lords dominated the next event, the 100-yard butterfly, as well. They claimed four of the top-five finishes with De Silva finishing first in 47.31, which was another pool and conference record. Fitch was second with a time of 47.57, Nicholas Tong was third with a time of 48.50 and Hong was fifth in 49.01. The old pool record was 47.60 and the old NCAC mark was 48.08. The results of the butterfly event upped Kenyon's lead to 117 points over the host Big Red.

In the 200-yard freestyle, Kenyon got a third-place finish from Reilly Shields (1:38.72) and a fifth-place finish from Connor Rumpit (1:39.24), but Denison claimed the top two spots to cut its deficit to 80 points.

Weekes then got into the individual-event wins in the 100-yard breaststroke. The sophomore clocked a 55.16 and netted 35 more points for the Lords. 

Kenyon answered with four top-seven finishes in the next event, the 100-yard backstroke. Fitch was the quickest Kenyon swimmer, clocking in at 48.45 to take second place. Tong took fourth (49.90), Tommy Weiss was sixth (50.43) and Hong was seventh (50.58).

Putting an exclamation mark on the end of the Kenyon night was freshman Drew Albrecht, who won the one-meter diving competition with a score of 458.90. Right behind him was classmate Mason Fishell, who scored a 455.95 to take second place. Barry Bai took ninth place and the Lords piled up 90 points in the diving event to push the Kenyon team out to a 172-point advantage in the overall team standings.

The championship meet resumes Saturday morning with preliminary heats starting at 9:30 a.m. and concludes with the final heats at 6 p.m.