CAMBRIDGE, Mass.— The Babson College women's swimming & diving team produced two program records and a pair of podium finishes to highlight day two of the New England Women's and Men's Athletic Conference (NEWMAC) Swimming and Diving Championships Friday inside MIT's Zesiger Center Pool.
The Beavers totaled 180 points on Friday and are currently fourth overall with 232 points through seven events, compared to 159 points after Day Two last year. MIT holds a sizeable lead with 615 points, while Coast Guard is second with 305 and Wellesley is third with 246.
Babson's 200-yard free relay team of sophomore
Samantha Gilbert (Arlington, Va.), first-year
AJ Hallbert (Enterprise, Ala.), junior
Sylvie Racicot (Arlington, Mass.) and sophomore
Julia Netishen (Exeter, N.H.) started the day with a bang, finishing third in the preliminaries with a program-record time of 1:35.98, surpassing the previous mark (1:37.81) set last year by nearly two seconds.
The Green and White quartet came back in the evening finals with a second-place finish in 1:36.03, becoming the first Babson relay team in program history to earn All-Conference honors (with a top-two finish), and the first All-Conference honor in any event since 2008. Babson's B team of first-year
Becky Hwang (Needham, Mass.), sophomore
Hailey Cronan (New Market, Md.), first-year
Lakshmi Prasanth (Apex, N.C.) and senior
Sophia Sznewajs (Edina, Minn.) placed second in the B final in a time of 1:39.57.
Netishen continued the historic day for the Beavers, finishing the 50 freestyle prelims in a program-record time of 23.98, placing in a tie for second and becoming the first Babson woman to swim a sub-24 seconds in the 50 free. She surpassed even that in the evening finals, lowering her program record with a time of 23.86 and earning a spot on the podium with a second-place finish, becoming the first Babson woman to earn All-Conference recognition in any individual event since 2008.
Netishen was one of four Beavers to score points in the 50 free. Racicot posted a career-best time of 24.43 seconds in the prelims to earn a spot in the A final, and finished 10th overall with a time of 24.60 in the evening session. Hallbert and Sznewajs touched the wall 11th and 13th, respectively, in personal-best times of 24.72 and 24.76, and Sznewajs finished first in the evenings' B final with a PR time of 24.49 and Hallbert was runner-up in a time of 24.87. Two others, Hwang and senior
Julia Ahn (Fullerton, Calif.) posted personal-best times in the prelims with times of 25.64 and 28.4 seconds, respectively.
Sophomores
Tuana Turhan (Lake Forest, Ill.) and
Marta Gershanok (Closter, N.J.) represented the Beavers in the evening session of the 200 IM. Turhan took 10th in the prelims in a personal-best time of 2:10.87 and wound up 10th in the evening finals with a 2:11.34, while Gershanok finished 20th in the prelims to earn a spot in the B final, where she swam a personal-best time of 2:13.47 to place 10th in the heat. The four other Beavers who competed in the 200 IM all posted personal best times, as Prasanth finished in 2:22.14, classmate
Finn Bergquist (Marblehead, Mass.) touched the wall in 2:22.88, senior
Vangella Randell (Holden, Mass.) posted a 2:23.83, and Ahn registered a time of 2:32.34.
Babson also had four entries in the 500 free, led by first-year
Middy Hinckley (Trent Woods, N.C.), and Randell who posted career-best times of 5:25.77 and 5:39.41, respectively. Senior
Jenny Chung (Cumming, Ga.) finished with a time of 5:41.77 and first-year
Leila Evans (Sandwich, Mass.) clocked in at 5:43.70.
Babson placed fourth and 16th in the final event of the evening, the 400-yard medley relay. The team of Netishen, Gilbert, Turhan, and Racicot finished in a time of 3:59.11 to place fourth in the A final, and the group of Hwang, Cronan, Sznewajs, and Hallbert submitted a time of 4:08.30 to place sixth in the B final.
Day three of the NEWMAC Championships gets underway with prelims at 10 a.m. on Saturday.
