Belfonti Breaks 18-year-old Butterfly Record

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – The Babson College women's swimming & diving team set one school record and moved up two spots to seventh place to highlight another night of strong performances at the New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference (NEWMAC) Championships on Saturday inside MIT's Zesinger Center Pool.

The Beavers picked up 82 points on Saturday and moved up to seventh place after 13 events with 196 points. No. 5 MIT is comfortably in first with 1028.5 points, Coast Guard is second with 513, and Wheaton is third with 486.

Senior Vera Belfonti (Orange, Conn.) had a strong performance for the Beavers in the 100 butterfly. After qualifying 11th in the prelims with a season-best time of 59.27 seconds, she won the B final with a program-record time of 58.46, lowering the Babson standard of 58.50 set by Meg Lynch in 2006. Senior Sophia Swain (Burnt Hills, N.Y.) finished in 22nd place in a time of 1:01.51, less than a second out of qualifying for the finals, while sophomores Sophia Sznewajs (Edina, Minn.) and Catherine Curry (Melrose, Mass.) posted season-best times of 1:02.03 and 1:02.82, respectively.

Senior April Kupsky (Bear Creek, Pa.) registered a solid performance in the 400 individual medley. After qualifying eighth with a season-best time of 4:39.58 to earn a spot in the A final, she brought home eighth place in the final with a season-best 4:39.30.

Juniors Emily Tran (Longmeadow, Mass.) and Maggie Cassily (Rye, N.H.) turned in strong showings for the Beavers in the 100 backstroke. After qualifying 20th in the prelims to sneak into the B final, Tran jumped five places to finish with fifth in a career-best time of 1:00.93. Cassily posted her career-best time of 1:00.66 in the prelims and finished seventh in the B final in 1:01.21. Curry also touched the wall in a season-best time of 1:03.23.

Junior Audrey Daniels (Santa Monica, Calif.) was the top Babson finisher in the 100 breaststroke. She posted a career-best time of 1:08.25 in the prelims to qualify for the finals, where she placed seventh in the B final with a time of 1:08.97. Sophomore Julia Ahn (Fullerton, Calif. ) posted a season-best time of 1:15.65 to finish 27th.
 
Sophomore Emma Chenski (Hopewell Junction, N.Y.) was Babson's top performer in the 200 freestyle, posting a career-best time of 2:01.75 to finish 25th.

Babson registered a seventh-place finish in the only relay race of the day, the 200 medley relay, as the team of Tran, Daniels, Belfonti and Racicot finished with a time of 1:49.17, second fastest in program history and less than a second off last year's record time of 1:48.31. The group of Cassily, Chenski, Sznewajs and Curry took sixth in the B final in 1:52.49.

The final day of the NEWMAC Championships takes place on Sunday, with preliminaries at 10 a.m. and finals at 6 p.m.