GENEVA, Ohio— The Colorado Mesa University women took second while the men took fifth with a school-record time in the 800-yard freestyle relays, the opening event of the NCAA Division II Swimming & Diving Championships, which officially got underway on Tuesday night here at the SPIRE Institute.
The Mavericks are also in those positions in the early team standings with four full days of action to go, Wednesday through Saturday.
The Maverick women's quartet of
Ada Qunell,
Katerina Matoskova,
Benedict Nagy and
Lauren White combined for a time of seven minutes, 15.54 seconds as they edged Drury by a single one-hundredth of a second. Defending team and event National Champion Nova Southeastern won the race in a meet championship record time of 7:08.50, bettering their year-old record of 7:12.56.
CMU was nearly three seconds faster than last year's fourth-place time of 7:18.46.
The second place finish marks the third straight time dating back to the 200 and 400-yard free relays at the 2023 NCAA Division II National Championships that the Mavs have finished second in a relay event, their best ever finishes in program history.
Minutes later in Tuesday's brief session, the Maverick men swam to a time of 6:25.42, just under their altitude-adjusted school record time of 6:25.49 that was good to win the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference title last month.
CMU also finished fifth in the 800 free relay last year with a time of 6:25.73.
Tuesday's team included
Ben Sampson,
Aziz Ghaffari,
Dejan Urbanek and
Jameson McEnaney, a freshman, who made his NCAA Championship debut. Ghaffari had the fastest split at 1:34.80 and put the Mavericks in the lead at the half-way point of the relay, while Sampson led-off in 1:35.08, just off Ghaffari's 200-yard school record of 1:34.98 from the RMAC Championships.
Official splits were not recorded for Qunell and Matoskova while Nagy and White posted relay splits of 1:48.04 and 1:48.24. The Mavs were in third place after the opening leg and fourth at the 400-yard mark before Nagy put the Mavs into second, where they would stay for the remainder of the race as White held off Drury's Josephine Bushell, who posted a 1:48.00 anchor split for the Panthers.
All eight Mavericks in the pool earned First Team CSCAA All-America honors and a spot on the podium thanks to a top-8 finish.
White, a fifth year senior extended her CMU all-sport record to 24 career honors as the anchor leg while Matoskova, a redshirt junior, picked up her 12
th career honor. Qunnell, a true sophomore, now has five while Nagy earned her first as a graduate transfer from Nevada, where she qualified for the NCAA Division I Championships in the 400-yard individual medley.
Sampson now has 15 career all-America honors matching former teammate
Mahmoud Elgayar's career record on the men's side. Urbanek has now earned nine career all-America certificates while Ghaffari claimed his first as a Maverick after earning a Division I honor in 2021 while swimming for Florida State.
McEnaney also earned his first as a Maverick.
Tampa won the men's relay in 6:20.78 as the Spartans lead the men's team standings with 40 points through the opening event, six clear of relay runner-up McKendree. CMU has 28.
The Maverick women have 34 points, trailing only Nova Southeastern's 40.
In 2023, the CMU women place fourth in the 800 free relay.
The Mavericks will be represented in all 42 events throughout the meet after qualifying four divers— two men and two women, from the pre-championship qualification meet on Tuesday.
Wednesday's action will begin with preliminary heats in the 200 individual medley, 50 free and the slower seeded sections of the 1,000 free in a morning session at 10 a.m. EDT (8 a.m Mountain). The men's 1-meter diving competition will also get underway three hours later while the evening's finals will begin at 5:30 p.m. EDT (3:30 p.m.), a session that will be capped by the 200 medley relay.
Nagy and Sampson are the top seeds in the 200 IMs while the Maverick women are also seeded first in the 200 medley relay.
