The Emory University women's swimming & diving team extended its lead at the UAA Championships Friday night following five more event titles while breaking three additional conference records.
Through three days of competition, the Eagles have a commanding lead at 430 points over second place Chicago. Emory leads all UAA schools with 1458 points followed by Chicago at 1028 and New York University at 951.5 points.
The Eagles go for their 29th conference title and 23rd in a row as competition winds down on Saturday. The final day of action features the 200 Backstroke, 100 Freestyle, 200 Breaststroke, 200 Butterfly, 1,650 Freestyle, 400 Freestyle Relay and the men's 1-meter diving. Prelims being at 10:00 AM in Atlanta with the finals to follow at 5:30 PM.
Emory earned event titles in five of the eight contested in on Friday, pushing its total to 10 event championships and seven UAA records with one day remaining.
Friday's swimming finals session began exactly how Thursday's concluded with an Emory relay team setting a UAA record on its way to an event title as the 200 Medley Relay team of sophomore Megan Jungers, seniors Edie Bates, Taylor Leone and junior Caroline Maki threw down an impressive 1:40.37 to break the five year-old UAA record. Emory has now won the event in seven of the previous eight conference championships.
Leone and Bates were not finished rewriting the UAA record books as both swimmers set meet records to win individual titles for the Eagles.
After being part of three UAA records on Thursday including the 50 Freestyle, Leone was back at it again as she set the conference record in the 100 Fly as she repeated as conference champion. She first broke the record in prelims at 54.31 before following with a winning time of 54.20 in the evening.
For Bates, she also repeated as a conference champion as she took home top honors in the 100 Breaststroke with a finals time of 1:03.05. During prelims, Bates touched at 1:02.91 as she eclipsed the eight year-old UAA record of 1:02.94. Friday marks the third All-UAA performance for Bates in the event and the ninth consecutive time an Eagle was crowned the 100 Breast champion.
Senior Clio Hancock registered her second individual event title of the week as she swept the IM events with a winning time of 4:22.85 in the 400.
To go along with the three solo event winners, Emory put forth nine additional All-UAA performers on Friday: juniors Allie MacMillan (2nd, 4:24.63) and Sarah Byers (3rd, 4:24.86) in the 400 IM, Jungers (2nd, 54.58) and junior Savannah Sowards (3rd, 55.51) in the 100 Fly, junior Nina Turcanu (2nd, 1:51.99) and senior Josie Uerling (3rd, 1:52.56) in the 200 Freestyle, senior Zoe Walker (2nd, 1:03.14) and junior Anna Glowniak (3rd, 1:03.76) in the 100 Breaststroke and Jungers again in the 100 Backstroke (2nd, 54.10).
The night concluded with Emory's fifth event title of the session coming in the 800 Freestyle Relay as Uerling, Hancock, Turcanu and senior Cailen Chinn combined for a winning time of 7:29.01, the Eagles' 14th straight victory in the event.