Thursday, February 28, 2008

SMU women’s swimming and diving shatters records at Conference USA Invitational

By Pegasus News wire

The No. 14 SMU women's swimming and diving team had a bit of a shaky start to the Conference USA Championship, but still managed to shatter school and conference records on the first day of competition at the CRWC Natatorium in Houston.

Only two events were scheduled for the women on the first day of the conference meet; the 200 medley relay and the 800 free relay. The Mustangs were the clear favorite heading into the meet, vying for their 12th consecutive conference title and their third straight C-USA crown.

In the 200 medley relay, the Mustangs were poised to take a big win, and were on pace to do just that. But the Mustangs were called for a disqualification on the third leg when the swimmer left the block too early.

The DQ didn't keep the Mustangs down for long, however. In the 800 free relay, SMU absolutely smashed the Conference USA and SMU school records. Jennifer Blackman, Petra Klosova, Candace Blackman and Sascha Van den Branden teamed up to clock a blistering 7:04.87. The NCAA automatic qualifying time is 7:10.49. The Mustangs, who had already qualified for NCAAs in that event, were nearly six seconds faster than the qualifying time.

The previous C-USA meet record (and Houston pool record) in the 800 free relay was 7:10.41, set last year by SMU. The previous SMU record was 7:07.13. Tonight's performance bettered the school record by almost three seconds.

"I'm very excited about what we're doing here so far," said head coach Steve Collins. "It's unfortunate that we got DQ'd in the 200 medley relay, but our time was almost two seconds faster than it was in November. We know that we can duplicate that effort at NCAAs next month. And then to break the 800 free relay record by so much is just so impressive. It's actually beyond words. It means so much. We're really just excited about the rest of the championship this week."

SMU will be back in action tomorrow starting at 10am, when the Mustangs have the 500 free, 200 IM and 50 free prelims. At 1pm, SMU will compete in the three-meter diving prelims. The finals for those events plus the 400 medley relay will begin at 6pm.

The complete meet schedule and live results can be found on the Conference USA Championship Central site here.

Source: SMU

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