The Emory University women’s 200-meter freestyle relay team won the National Championship in the event for the second-straight year, helping to keep the Eagles’ women in first place two days into the NCAA Division III Swimming and Diving Championships.  The Emory men earned two more all-America honors and ended the second day in second place.

Emory’s 200-meter freestyle relay team of seniors Ruth Westby and Lillian Ciardelli, freshman Ann Wolber, and sophomore Claire Pavlak claimed the championship with an NCAA Division III record time of 1:31.80, besting the squad’s own record set at last year’s meet by .28 seconds.  The relay became the fourth National Champion relay in the program’s history.

It also marked the fourth National Championship of Westby’s career, tying her with Julie Hogan (1985), Samantha White (2005-06) and Liz Horvat (2009-present) for the most in the program’s history.

Westby would later add on her third all-America honor of the meet, and program-best 23^rd of her career, finishing third in the 200-yard freestyle with a time of 1:48.91.  Westby has now earned all-America honors all four years of her career in two separate events – the 50- and 200-yard freestyles – becoming just the second Eagle all time to do so.  Sophomore Whitley Taylor would earn all-America honors in the 200 free with an eighth-place finish, while junior Katie Mroz would get an honorable mention with a 15^th-place finish.

Junior Liz Horvat notched her second all-America honor of the meet with a second-place finish in the 400-yard individual medley with a time of 4:19.53, while freshman Theresa Gallagher picked up an all-America certificate with a sixth-place finish in the event.  Senior Natty Chalermpalanupap finished 15^th in the 400 IM to earn an honorable mention.

The Emory women also picked up a pair of all-America honors in the 100-yard butterfly, as freshman Leslie Hackler finished fourth with a time of 55.62 seconds, just ahead of Ciardelli in fifth place.

Emory earned its final all-America honor of the day in the 400-yard medley relay, as Pavlak, April Whitley, Ciardelli and Westby finished third with a time of 3:45.97.

Emory currently sits atop the women’s standings halfway through the competition with 297 points scored, leading second-place Denison University (251 points) and third-place Williams College (206 points). 

Senior John Petroff paced the way for the Emory men, finishing second in the 100-yard butterfly with a time of 48.28 seconds, the second-fastest in school history.  It marked the second-straight year Petroff has earned an all-American finish in the event, and his seventh career all-America certificate.

Petroff later teamed with Matt Spooner, Kevin Yamada and Tom DiMarco to earn all-America honors in the 400-yard medley relay.  The Eagles finished fourth in the event with a time of 3:19.20.

Sophomore Bryant Jones and junior Matt Spooner finished 11^th and 14^th, respectively, in the 400-yard individual medley to earn all-America honorable mentions in the event, while junior Mark Bernstein earned an honorable mention with a 12^th-place finish in the 200-yard freestyle.  Emory’s 200-yard freestyle relay team of senior Tom DiMarco, Justin Leemis, Dustin Frissell and Bernstein also picked up an honorable mention with a 14^th-place finish.

The Emory men have scored 140.5 points to place the team in second behind first-place Kenyon College (366 points) and third-place Denison University (137 points) at the end of two days.

Action at the National Championship meet will resume with preliminaries tomorrow at 11:00 AM EST at the University of Minnesota Aquatic Center in Minneapolis, MN.