CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – The Babson College men's and women's swimming & diving teams got underway at the final meet of the season Thursday on the opening night of the New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference (NEWMAC) Championships inside the MIT Zesinger Center Pool.

The only swimming events were the men's and women's 800-yard freestyle relays. The Babson men's contingents finished in third and 13th place while the women's quartets came in eighth and 17th place.

In the men's three-meter diving, senior Max Leussler (Millis, Mass.) qualified fifth in the preliminaries with a career-best score of 357.75, more than 100 points higher than his effort on the 3-meter event back in December at WPI. He went on to finish third in the finals with a score of 359.55, earning 21 points with scores of all 7s on his inward double somersault in the tuck position.

In the team scoring, the Babson men are in third place out of seven schools with 74 points, just one point ahead of Coast Guard and two up on Springfield.  The Babson women's squad sits tied for seventh with Smith College out of 10 schools with 38 points.

Babson's top men's relay team of seniors Nathan Ford (Charlotte, N.C.), Blake Albanese (Middletown, N.Y.), and Joshua Kim (La Cañada Flintridge, Calif.), and first-year Anthony Taslakov (Sherborn, Mass.) earned a podium spot with a third-place finish in the A Final in a time of 6:49.88, nearly three and a half seconds better than last year. The performance is the second-fastest time in Babson history, and Ford's leadoff split of 1:41.94 is the third-best time in the 200 free in program history.

The Babson 'B' team of first-year Chase Stevens (Suffield, Conn.), seniors Joshua Sellers (Fair Oaks, Calif.) and Max Weygandt (Madison, Wisc.) and sophomore Spencer Ernst (Chagrin Falls, Ohio) finished third in the 'B' race in a time of 7:02.17, five seconds back of second place WPI.

Leading the Babson women were the group of senior April Kupsky (Bear Creek, Pa.), junior Kendall Garvey (Wilbraham, Mass.), and sophomores Sophia Sznewajs (Edina, Minn.) and Emma Chenski (Hopewell Junction, N.Y.), who finished eighth in a time of 8:06.67.

Babson's second contingent of first-year Nicolette Newsome (Bridgewater, N.J.), sophomores Vangella Randell (Holden, Mass.) and Dahiana Gussoni (Jaco, Costa Rica) and junior Sophia Silver (Fayetteville, N.Y.) took seventh in the 'B' final in a time of 8:21.33, eight seconds behind sixth-place Springfield.

Day two of the NEWMAC Championships resumes on Friday morning beginning at 10 a.m.