Six Swarthmore School Records Fall on Day One of CC Championships
LANCASTER, Pa. -- The Swarthmore swim teams broke six school records as the teams competed at the 14th annual Centennial Conference Swimming Championships held at the Kunkel Aquatic Center on the campus of Franklin & Marshall College.
The Garnet men are in second place after the first day of competition with 226 points, just behind leader Franklin & Marshall (238 points). The Swarthmore women sit in third place with 179 team points, trailing overall leader F&M (205) and Gettysburg (204).
The Garnet put up some impressive times in the morning preliminaries -- Cotcamp missed a school record in the 50 freestyle with time of 24.81 (.02 shy) while classmate Augat was a hair shy (.01) of the men's 50 freestyle record. Both won their heats and entered the finals with the top seed.
As the finals started on Friday night, the Swarthmore women's quartet of Julia Wrobel '10, Franny Zhang '08, Jennie Lewis '08 and Sarah Cotcamp '07 picked up their first medal of the championships in the 200 freestyle relay, taking silver with a time of 1:39.88.
Miller picked up her the first Centennial medal, swimming third in the 500 freestyle, picking up the bronze with a school-record time of 5:11.48. The old record was set by Claire Arbour '00 (5:13.08) in 1997.
Cotcamp picked up a gold medal in the 50 freestyle, swimming to a dead-heat with Washington's Kathy Gerhart with a school-record time of 24.71. Cotcamp broke the record set by Lewis (24.79) in 2005.
Swarthmore picked up another gold medal in the next event, the 400 medley relay, as Allie Jordan '09, Janice Yeo '07, Miller and Cotcamp swam a time of 4:01.97 for another school record. The old record was set in 2000 (4:02.58). Jordan swam a school-record time of 1:01.33 in the lead backstroke leg, breaking the previous mark of 1:01.33 shared by two swimmers, most recently set in 1997.
The Garnet men, the 2007 Centennial dual meet champions, took gold in their first event of the night with a school-record time of 1:25.81 in the 200 freestyle relay. The quartet of Douglas Gilchrist-Scott '09, Andrew Koczo '07, Jonathan Augat '07, and Jason Horwitz '07, just beat out the F&M team (1:25.96), taking down the old Swarthmore record set in 2003 (1:27.58).
Stephen Shymon '09 picked up the first individual medal for the Garnet men, grabbing the silver in the 500 freestyle with a time of 4:44.07. Teammate Andrew Frampton '08 also swam in the championship heat, finishing sixth with a time of 4:52.33.
Swarthmore picked up valuable points in the 50 freestyle as Augat picked up the gold in a school-record time (21.57), Gilchrist-Scott took the bronze (21.87), and Horwitz just missed the medal stand in fourth (21.98).
The Garnet men swam a time of 3:32.69 in the 400 medley relay, as Gilchrist-Scott, Koczo, Brian Roth '09, and Horwitz grabbed the silver medal just missing a school record time (3:32.24 set in 1996).
The championship continues on Saturday with preliminaries starting in the morning at 10:30 a.m. and the finals at 6:30 p.m.--the finals can be seen live on the Centennial Conference Broadcast Network starting at 6:25 p.m. Click here for more information