Pleasant Prairie, Wis. -- The 2024-25 season came to an end for the Wheaton men's swimming and diving team on Saturday with the final day of the CCIW Swimming & Diving Championships in Wisconsin. The Thunder entered the last segment of the conference meet in third place following Friday's results, and this is where they remained in the team standings tonight. Augustana College secured its third-consecutive conference crown on Saturday, while Carthage College came in second behind the Vikings. These three programs again proved to be in a class of their own, as Wheaton's third-place tally of 819 was nearly 600 points ahead of Carroll University in fourth. The Rock Island victors finished with a total of 926 points, and the runner-up Firebirds had a score of 885.5. The Thunder picked up two more individual titles in the pool on Saturday, and freshman Jed Ritchie was named the CCIW Men's Swimming First-Year Student-Athlete of the Meet for his impressive Championships debut.

Instead of a relay competition, tonight's finals program began with the longest individual event of the meet, the 1650-yard freestyle. This swim yielded the first of the aforementioned pair of victories for Wheaton tonight, as sophomore Isaac Eilmes topped the 11-man field to claim the Thunder's first title in the event since 2017. Eilmes posted a time of 16:11.25 and won the endurance race by a convincing 8.84-second margin, finishing the event one spot ahead of his teammate Alex Bergsma, who swam to a runner-up finish to contribute 17 points to Wheaton's score. (podium picture at right) 

Jac Cummings then followed up his 100-yard backstroke title performance on Friday night by earning another top-three placement and All-Conference designation in the 200-yard edition. The freshman swam at a 1:52.71 mark, and fellow Wheaton participant Ben Fox came in fourth place just behind him.

Ben Coley was extremely close to picking up a winner's medal himself in the 100-yard freestyle, finishing second and touching the wall just .08 second after the experienced Augustana champion on a time of 45.86.

Ritchie then took center stage in the men's 200-yard butterfly competition, and the freshman picked up his second solo victory of the week by registering a time mark of 1:52.73 to win the event by 1.58 seconds. Similar to Eilmes' victory in the 1650 free, this notably marked Wheaton's first title win in the 200 fly since 2018. 
 The night and the meet concluded with the staging of the men's 400-yard freestyle relay, and the order of the top three quartets in this event mirrored the top three sequence of the team standings. But the Thunder's group nearly pipped their Carthage rivals to second place, as Cummings, Coley, Ritchie, and Kaden Gannon teamed up to post a mark of 3:07.12 in the race, only .60 second behind the Firebirds' runner-up squad and good for an additional 28 points on the scoreboard.

At the end of the night's schedule, conference officials handed out awards to the top performers at this year's Championships. The Wheaton men's team got to celebrate one of its own earning such an award when Ritchie was named the CCIW Men's Swimming First-Year Student-Athlete of the Meet. The freshman won solo titles in both the 200 fly and 400 IM this weekend, and he becomes the fourth Wheaton men's swimmer to garner the accolade after Jack O'Connor (2015), Chris Szymczak (2016), and current teammate Eilmes last year. (pictured with award plaque at right) 

After another eventful, exciting, and competitive conference championship meet, the Thunder men's swimming and diving team will head into its offseason break and slowly begin working towards the 2025-26 campaign.