WMVO Good Times Great Oldies
GAMBIER, Ohio — The Kenyon College men’s swimming and diving team completed a competitive Total Performance Invitational on Saturday night, wrapping up the annual meet. The Owls added three wins over seven events on the Invitational’s third and final day helping the home team clinch the team title.
Kenyon tallied 1,794.5 points over three days, pacing the eight-team field by 277 points. Carnegie Mellon University overtook West Chester University (1,484), an NCAA Division II institution, on the final day to clinch second place with 1,517.5 points.
It took two events for the Owls to come out on top, but Kenyon bounced back with consecutive wins in the 100-yard freestyle and 200-yard breaststroke. In the 100 freestyle, Djordje Dragojlovic added to his strong weekend with a winning time of 43.91. The mark cleared the NCAA ‘B’ cut threshold of 45.02 and marked the fastest time for an NCAA Division III swimmer in the event this season. Noel Tumbasz followed up with a win in the 200 breaststroke, clocking in over two seconds ahead of the next finisher, his teammate Kirill Sidorko (2:01.28). Tumbasz’s time of 1:58.83 was under the ‘B’ cut mark of 2:01.06 and was the season’s second sub-2:00.00 DIII swim so far.
Kenyon’s other individual win came on the diving boards. Junior Owen Peterson posted a score of 515.25 from one meter up, pacing the six-diver field. Owls first-year James Lackner backed up his three-meter win on Thursday with a second-place showing in today’s one-meter contest, compiling 448.50 points. Both totals cleared the ‘B’ cut tally of 425.00.
In addition to Sidorko and Lackner, the Owls secured one more second-place finish and also added a pair of third-place showings. Two of those podium placements came in the 200-yard backstroke, where Ethan Manske and Charlie Green finished second and third. Manske touched first at 1:46.58, just ahead of Green at 1:47.10. Both marks surpassed the 1:49.01 ‘B’ cut standard. The final medal came in the final race, the 400-yard freestyle relay. Kenyon’s A team of Neil Abrahamson, Spencer Stluka, Sidorko, and Dragojlovic finished third with a time of 3:00.93, another ‘B’ cut.
Another ‘B’ standard was surpassed in the evening’s first race, the 1,650-yard medley relay. Though sophomore Roman Savage finished fifth in the fast field at 15:50.29, he cleared the ‘B’ cutoff by 0.59 seconds.
With the Invitational in the books, the Owls are looking at a long break from competition. Their next contest is set for January 10 when they’ll face off against Prince University and the United States Naval Academy in Princeton, New Jersey.
