Men's Swimming & Diving | 2/20/2019 9:27:00 PM
ITHACA, NY – The RIT men's swimming and diving team is currently second out of nine teams after opening round action Wednesday at the 2019 Liberty League Swimming and Diving Championship from the Kelsey Bird Partridge Natatorium on the campus of Ithaca College.
RIT has 272 points, second behind defending champion Rensselaer, who opened with 409 points. Host Ithaca is third with 249 points.
RIT's 200-yard medley relay team of
Derek Rothrock (Ashburn, VA/Briar Woods),
Carl Schlehr (Maineville, OH/Kings),
Ben Metzger (Webster, NY/Webster Thomas) and
Will Brown (Boulder, CO/Fairview) crushed a school mark in the event, set last season by more than two seconds in a time of 1:33.05. That broke the previous Liberty League record of 1:33.19. Rensselaer's team also broke the record and just nipped out the Tigers for the win in a time of 1:32.92.
Eric Moss (Irvington, NY/Irvington) and
Joe Wang (Framingham, MA/Framingham) excelled in the "A" final of the 500-yard freestyle. Moss placed third overall in a snappy time of 4:42.45, while Wang placed seventh in 4:48.42.
Adam Reitz (Hilton, NY/Hilton) finished 13th overall (4:54.62), while Jimmy Antonelli was right behind in 15th, just 16 one-hundredths of a second back.
RIT had two finishers in the top-eight of the 50-yard freestyle. Brown finished fourth overall in 21.14 seconds after recording a time of 21.11 in the preliminaries this morning. Metzger placed eighth in 21.65 seconds. Rothrock and
Braden Feasley (Hamburg, NY/Hamburg) finished 11th and 13th overall.
Brendan Kapp (Springfield, VA/Trinity School) was RIT's top finisher in the 200-yard individual medley, placing 10th overall with a time of 1:57.68. Schlehr also broke two minutes, recording a time of 1:59.68 in the final to finish 14th. Earlier in the day, he finished in 1:59.09.
RIT's second unit of
Tyler Schwarz (Stanley, NY/Marcus Whitman), Kapp,
Keanu Pagano (Oxnard, CA/Oxnard) and
Mark Truskinovsky (Williamsville, NY/Williamsville North) had the sixth best time among all teams in the final, completing the event in 1:36.99.
Day two of the 2019 Liberty League Championships begins with preliminary action on Thursday, starting at 10 a.m. Thursday finals action starts at 6 p.m.
