GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.— The Colorado Mesa University swimming and diving teams continued their march towards potential four-peats as they won six more events, two of which came in podium-sweeping fashion on the second day of the 2022 Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Championships on Thursday here in the El Pomar Natatorium.
The Mavericks won both relays and went 1-2-3 in both the women's 200-yard freestyle and the men's 1-meter diving event and swept the 400-yard medley relays while also receiving another record-setting individual medley win from
Lily Borgenheimer after Serbian freshman
Dejan Urbanek got the Mavericks rolling for the night with a thrilling victory in the men's 100 fly.
Kelsea Wright led the 200 free sweep over teammates
Katerina Matoskova and
Lauren White while
Isaiah Cheeks won the diving event to book his spot at next month's NCAA Division II National Championships with a career-best national qualifying score of 514.35 points, ahead of
Noah Luna and
Tanner Belliston.
The Maverick women have now won nine of the ten completed events, including three of the four on Thursday, extending their team-scoring lead to 258 points (643 ½-385 ½) over second place Colorado School of Mines and the rest of the 7-team field.
The Maverick men have now claimed six victories at the half-way point of the meet, opening up a 147-point (597 ½-450 ½) lead over Mines and the other two teams in the men's meet.
Both CMU teams have swept the team titles at the 2019, 2020 and 2021 RMAC Championships.
Borgenheimer had the most dominant individual performance of the Thursday night as she claimed the 400-yard IM in four minutes, 20.57 seconds, which with the altitude adjustments converts to 4:15.57, good for the NCAA Division II National Performance List. The mark also obliterated the former CMU record of 4:22.09, which had been set at the 2014 national championships by Brianna Purkapile.
Borgenheimer, who also leads the country in the 200 IM and 200 breast, had gone slightly better than Purkapile in the morning preliminaries with a time of 4:27.01 (4:22.01-converted) but was edged for the top qualifying spot by Oklahoma Christian's Cheyenne Parks, who had won a different preliminary heat in 4:26.99.
However, Borgenheimer dominated the final, especially on the breaststroke leg, to win by nearly eight second over teammate
Davy Brown, who ranks third in program history with her time of 4:28.46 (4:23.46-converted). Parks took third while
Amelia Kinnard, CMU's 1,000 free record holder, took fourth in 4:32.26 (4:27.26-converted) to move into the No. 7 spot of CMU lore with her "B" cut time.
Borgenheimer had also set the new RMAC, pool and CMU records while taking the national lead in the 200 IM on Wednesday, ahead of Brown.
Minutes earlier, Urbanek won a thrilling 100 fly race in 48.09 seconds to move up a spot to second in CMU history with an improved NCAA provisional qualifying time. Mines had the next four finishers in what was their best event of the night, while
Treven Wertz (49.74) and
Lane Austin (49.90) were sixth and seventh, respectively.
The Mavs also had some solid efforts in the women's 100 fly, which kicked off the evening session. The Mavs qualified three for the championship final as
Logan Anderson finished second in 57.86 seconds, just 0.05 off the win, while
Julie Day took sixth in 58.41.
Bella Walters touched eighth in 59.40.
The Maverick men also picked up two medals in the 400 IM as
Jake Simmons claimed the silver in 4:02.04, just ¾ of a second ahead of freshman
Jacob Troescher, who claimed the bronze in 4:02.79 to move into the No. 7 spot of program history, three behind Simmons.
They both set NCAA "B" cut times as did
Matt Barrett, who dominated the consolation heat with a time of 4:02.57 to move up four rungs to sixth in Maverick history.
The Mavs then returned to their winning ways in a big way taking the top three and five of the top seven spots in the women's 200 free. Wright led the way in 1:50.75 while Matoskova (1:50.93) and White (1:51.12) were right behind.
Ruby Bottai also set a NCAA "B" cut mark of 1:54.25 to finish fifth while Anderson took seventh in 1:55.67 on the back-half of her tough fly/free double.
Wright and Matoskova both set new personal-bests and occupy the second and third spots in program history behind White, the school record holder.
The Mavericks finished third, fourth and eighth in the men's 200 free as freshman
Kuba Kiszczak moved into the No. 5 spot of program history after touching in 1:38.73.
Matheus Laperriere was fourth in 1:39.80 while
Jeremy Koch finished in 1:41.58.
Fellow freshman
John Walgast won the consolation final in 1:41.01, joining Kiszczak and Laperriere as NCAA provisional qualifiers.
Cheeks, competing for the first time this entire season on Thursday, then stole the show on the diving boards, winning his first conference title by 21.40 points. Luna was second with 492.95 while
Tanner Belliston, who had led the group after the preliminaries, slipped back to third with 490.90 points. All three easily eclipsed the national qualifying standard of 440 points in both the preliminaries and finals.
After the diving competition, the Mavericks steam-rolled to a women's 400 medley relay win. White, Borgenheimer, Brown and Day combined for a time of 3:46.04 to win by 7.71 seconds over Oklahoma Christian. The Mavericks also secured a lane in the national championships with the time as Day and Borgenheimer both went to the top step of the awards podium for the fourth time in the meet.
The Mavs then completed the evening's relay sweep on the men's side as
Ben Sampson,
Mahmoud Elgayar, Urbanek and Laperriere out-touched Oklahoma Christian by just 0.08 seconds. The Maverick quartet finished in a national-qualifying time of 3:14.42.
Elgayar has now won 12 RMAC titles in his illustrious 4-year Maverick career while Sampson, a redshirt freshman, has nine, including all three relays contested so far this year. He won six RMAC titles to earn RMAC Freshman of the Year accolades in the pandemic-effected 2020-21 season.
Eleven more events will be contested on Friday.
