GRAND JUNCTION, Colo.— The Colorado Mesa University Maverick swimmers got out to a very fast start at the TYR/CMU Invitational, combining for five school, four meet and three El Pomar Natatorium records while claiming five of the six events on Wednesday, the opening night of the meet, which will run through Saturday.
The Mavs also set a pair of NCAA Division II Championship automatic qualifying times and 11 other "B" cut times in individual disciplines while successfully qualifying teams for the national championships in all four of the relay events that were contested throughout the evening.
The Maverick women won all three of the evening's events and opened a 235-153 lead over Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference rival Colorado School of Mines. NCAA Division I Northern Arizona is sitting in third place with 132 points after largely sitting out of the 1,000-yard freestyle.
The Maverick men also won both relays but trail Mines, 207-205 through three events.
The highlights of the main meet came in the 800-yard freestyle relays as
Ada Qunell led off the Maverick women with a meet-record 200 free split of 1:48.15 while she, Linnea Sjöberg,
Kendyll Wilkinson and
Olivia Hansson combined for a time of 7:20.88 to win by more than eight seconds over NAU's quartet.
Qunell's altitude-adjusted time of 1:46.95 also broke Wilkinson's former school-record of 1:48.11, set at last year's invite, by 1.16 seconds and is the first NCAA automatic qualifying team of the season around the country.
The Maverick men then did even better as 2024 Paris Olympian
Guillaume Guth put down an opening-leg split of 1:35.51 (1:34.31-converted) to lead the Mavericks to a meet and pool record time of 6:28.56. The converted mark of 6:24.16, posted by the Frenchman and a trio of Germans in
Richard Schmiedefeld,
Ben Vester Jonas Friess also surpassed the Mavs' school record by 1.26 seconds.
Guth's lead-off split was also a trifecta of records and put him into the national lead by 1.64 seconds while automatically qualifying him for the national meet in March.
The Mavs also set two more school records, as well as another pool and meet record in the time trials which followed the 800 free relays.
Oskar Sawicki started the run in the 50 fly, touching in 20.79 seconds, more than a second quicker than
Harry Stacey's 2024 mark of 21.81.
Aron Jonsson then broke the school and meet record in the 200 breast with a time of 1:56.76 (1:55.56-converted), breaking
Marcos Otero's former record mark of 1:58.03 (1:56.63-converted) from last year by more than a second.
The evening had started with the 200 medley relay as the Mavs' women's quartet of
Taylar Hooton,
Antonia Leese,
Kiara Borchardt and Qunell won in 1:40.74, well under the NCAA qualifying standard.
Luka Samsonov, Otero, Sawicki and Guth then won the men's race in an NCAA qualifying time 1:26.22, besting the Mavs' "B" team by 2.16 seconds and Mines' top squad by 3.10 seconds.
Hansson then won the women's 1000 free in 10:12.28 while two other Mavs set NCAA "B" qualifying times as the Mavs went 1-2-4 and putting five swimmers in the top six. Hansson's mark was just off her own national lead of 10:08.47 (9:57.07-converted) from last month.
Meanwhile,
Hanna Sasivarevic posted a time of 10:22.81 (10:11.41-convered) to place second and move into the nation's top 10 while
Melaina Howard also set a national championship provisional time of 10:28.71 (10:17.31-converted) to finish fourth while moving into the No. 10 spot of program history.
Four Maverick men also set NCAA "B" cut times in the discipline.
Gavyn Tatge led the group, placing second in 9:24.01 (9:12.61-converted) to improve his No. 5 position in CMU history.
Conrad Fawcett was the next to touch, doing so in 9:27.26 (9:15.86-converted) to move into seventh for program history.
CMU newcomers
Ethan Gluck (9:32.84/9:21.44-converted) and Friess (9:36.36/9:24.96-converted) also set NCAA "B" cut times while finishing fifth and seventh, respectively.
Mines sophomore Vladislav Kazakin, the reigning RMAC Champion, won the race by 1.09 seconds in 9:22.92.
The Mavs also added three additional NCAA "B" cut times in the time trials as freshman
Micah Moore put down a time of 47.98 seconds (47.88-converted) in the 100 fly to move into fourth place on the Mavs' all-time list.
Tori Bartusiak then completed the women's 200 fly in 2:03.92 (2:02.72-converted) before freshman
Nathan Knobelspiesse finished the men's time trial in 1:48.45 (1:47.25-converted) to move into the No. 3 spot of CMU history.
Thursday's action will get underway with preliminary swimming heats at 10 a.m. and diving preliminaries at Noon. The evening's final session begins at 5 p.m.
