Wheaton, Ill. -- For the first time in over a decade, the Thunder women's swim team wrapped up the Wheaton Invitational atop the team standings as the Thunder narrowly edged Olivet Nazarene University in a tight team race. The Thunder leaned on solid relay performances on Saturday to hold off the Tigers, winning the 200 medley relay and finishing second in the concluding 400 free relay to finish with 761.5 team points, topping ONU by 29 points. UW-Stevens Point was third with 642 points and UW-Whitewater finished fourth on the women's side with 510 points. The Thunder men earned a second place team finish with 604.5 points, trailing only Stevens Point. Barton Community College was third with 528 points and Whitewater was fourth with 429 points.Â
Katie Yonan won a thriller on Saturday in the 200-yard freestyle, finishing in 1:55.14 with a margin of victory of just .73 seconds. Yonan also placed fifth in the 50-yard freestyle with a time of 24.67 seconds, .13 seconds behind teammate
Sophie Pelling who finished in third place. Wheaton also topped the podium in the 200-yard breaststroke with
Lily Foung leading a 1-2 Thunder finish with a time of 2:24.88. Ellie Bennett was second in 2:29.27.
Olivia Wiebe and
Gloria Coleman finished first and third respectively in the 1650-yard freestyle. In the 100-yard butterfly,
Abby Pardridge earned a third place finish, touching just a quarter second behind the leader in 58.18 seconds and
Carolyn Bubar was fifth with a time of 1:00.53.
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On the men's side, Anthony Fitzgerald turned in the highlight of the day, winning the 200-yard breaststroke with an NCAA B cut time of 2:00.61 with teammate Andrew Rogers (2:11.44) and David Stevenson (2:12.02) finishing third and fourth. AJ Staiti and Harrison Smith each earned top-five finishes in the 100-yard butterfly with Staiti finishing third in 50.38 seconds and Smith coming in fifth in 52.08 seconds. Abe Plimpton earned a fifth place finish in the 100-yard backstroke with a time of 52.65 and Travis Ford was fifth in the 1650-yard freestyle in 17:23.60. The Thunder 200-yard medley relay team earned a second place finish, less than a second off the pace and Wheaton's 400-yard freestyle relay finished in third place, just over two seconds back of first place Augustana.
