Pleasant Prairie, Wis. -- After Wednesday night's opening event win in the 800-yard freestyle relay, the Thunder women's swimming team returned to the Pleasant Prairie RecPlex pool for day two of the CCIW Swimming Championships on Thursday. Wheaton's strong start to the week continued this evening, as the Thunder swept both relay competitions and Tess Boyer retained her conference crown in the 200-yard IM to highlight the day's program. The Wheaton women's team leads the pack heading into the second full day of swimming action on Friday.

With all seven CCIW programs now officially competing in the meet, the team standings through Thursday's event schedule are as follows: Wheaton holds a 40-point lead atop the pile with a total score of 342, with the reigning conference champions Augustana College in second on 302. Carthage College is currently third in the rankings with a 283 total, while Illinois Wesleyan University sits in fourth on 206 points. Carroll University is in fifth place with a score of 119, followed by North Central College and Millikin University with respective tallies of 65 and 56 points.

The Thunder picked up where they left off on Wednesday night, racking up another relay win to begin tonight's slate of competitions. Aubrey Swanson, Rebecca Darter, Savannah Jeffery, and Boyer teamed up to extend Wheaton's recent dominance in the women's 200-yard freestyle relay by capturing the program's fifth-consecutive title with a season-best performance of 1:36.07, bettering their incoming seed time by more than two seconds. The result marked Boyer and Darter's second-straight 200 free relay victory at the conference meet after winning the race last year with a nearly-identical team time of 1:36.03. (podium medal ceremony at left)

Swanson then collected her first individual medal of the championships thanks to a runner-up placement in the 50-yard freestyle competition. The sophomore registered a finals time of 24.47 to come in second place, .31 seconds behind the champion from Augustana. Relay teammate Jeffery was just behind Swanson in third place on a 24.59 line that earned her the bronze medallion.

One of Wheaton's victorious relay swimmers in the 800 free, Allison Henschel, logged a second-place finish of her own in the next event, the 500 free. The rookie swam a season-best time of 5:10.10 in tonight's race to seal her runner-up status.

Boyer's time in the spotlight arrived next, as the junior successfully defended her 2025 title in the women's 200 IM with a record-breaking showing. The previous CCIW Championships record in the event was 2:04.42 set by Wheaton's Katie Deysher in 2015, and Boyer eclipsed this mark in her prelim swim this morning, clocking a time of 2:04.27. She saved an even better performance for the final, however, registering a 2:03.94 mark to become the first women's swimmer to complete the event in under two minutes and four seconds at the conference championships.
This new standard-setting time is just .22 seconds off of Boyer's already-existing program and conference record time in the 200 IM of 2:03.72 that she established at the Wheaton Invitational in December. 

Freshman Lydia Hansen put in an excellent performance of her own in the same race, logging a season-best time of 2:11.71 to finish as the runner-up. This mark improved upon her previous top time in the 200 IM by a noteworthy 7.45 seconds and ranks as the second-fastest count in the conference this year. (podium medal ceremony at right)

Wheaton ended Thursday's session in style, claiming a sweep of the evening's relay competitions and solidifying its first place standing in the team rankings with a victory in the 400-yard medley. Jeffery swam the lead-off leg this time, and she was joined by Hansen, Kara Grace Hess, and Swanson on anchor duty. This quartet snapped Augustana's three-year title run in the event with a 4:00.18 showing that beat the Vikings' runner-up squad by nearly three seconds to further underline Wheaton's relay strength.

After some meaningful results and notable performances on Thursday, the Thunder will look to remain atop the standings in Friday's program, with event prelims set to begin at 10:30 AM and finals starting at 6 PM.