Pleasant Prairie, Wis. -- After Wednesday's slate saw four diving competitions and two relay races take place, the conference swimming championships well and truly began on Thursday inside the Pleasant Prairie Rec Plex. Day two of this year's CCIW Championships saw the Wheaton women's team pick up where it left off on Wednesday evening by securing another individual title and a second relay victory. A similar quartet of Thunder swimmers to last night's relay win finished first place in the women's 200-yard freestyle, before
Tess Boyer earned the first solo swimming gold medal of the week for Wheaton with her strong performance in the 200-yard IM. The Thunder women's squad currently sits third in the seven-team standings after tonight's events with a score of 304, trailing second-placed Augustana College by a mere 2.5 points and the leaders Carthage College by 26 while owning a sizable 104.5-point lead over Illinois Wesleyan University in fourth.
Tonight's finals program got underway with the women's 200-yard freestyle relay, and the Thunder captured the top spot on the podium in the event for a fourth year running.
Katie Yonan,
Scottie McKeaney, and
Tess Boyer teamed up for their second relay victory in as many days and were joined by
Rebecca Darter. The group posted a combined time of 1:36.03 to claim the crown ahead of the runner-up quartet from Carthage by a 1.74-second margin. Yonan, who led off the relay this evening, has been a member of all four victorious Wheaton teams in the 200 free the last four years, while McKeaney secured her second-consecutive
win in the event tonight.
Boyer then wasted no time in adding to her medal haul by winning her first solo race of the week, the women's 200-yard IM. The standout sophomore blew past her competition with a NCAA 'B Cut' time of 2:05.65 to win the event by a massive 6.68-second margin.
(podium picture at left)
Boyer's win snapped a three-year run of 200 IM champions coming from Illinois Wesleyan.
Freshman
Erin Davis finished first in the consolation final of the same event with a time of 2:17.85 to add nine points to Wheaton's score.
Yonan picked up her second piece of hardware on Thursday with a third-place finish in the 50-yard freestyle, registering a time of 24.10 seconds to touch the wall just .11 second behind the three-time defending champion from Carroll University and earn All-Conference honors in the event.
(podium photo below at right)
Wheaton finished the night by seeking its third-straight relay victory of the meet in the women's 400-yard medley, but the competing Thunder quartet had to settle for third place, as Augustana claimed first and edged in front of Wheaton in the standings as a result.
The Thunder women's squad will continue its stay at the Championships on Friday morning in a 10:30 AM round of event preliminaries before day three's finals begin at approximately 6 PM.
