Feb. 26, 2009

Complete Results in PDF Format

HOUSTON --- The East Carolina men's and women's swimming and diving teams combined to set five varsity records on the second day of the 2009 Conference USA Championships and Invitational.

The men's team moved into third place with 180 total points, while the ladies remained in fourth place with 181.5 points. SMU maintained its hold on first place in both the men's invitational and women's championships.

Sophomore Thiago Cavalcanti broke his own school record in the 500-yard freestyle during this morning's preliminaries to advance to tonight's finals. He eclipsed his personal best mark by over two seconds to establish a new record of 4:25.13. Cavalcanti finished second during the finals with a time slightly slower at 4:25.55.

Junior Rachel Blue also set the record in the 500-yard freestyle on the women's side during the preliminaries. She finished fourth in tonight's finals with a time of 4:52.91 after setting a new record this morning with a time of 4:52.38.

Senior Brennan Gaeckle recorded the second-fastest 500-yard freestyle time in ECU history with a mark of 4:54.42.

Sophomore Jenna Stewart became the fastest swimmer in school history by setting the varsity record in the 50-yard freestyle. Stewart set the new mark in the finals with a time of 22.84 finishing in third place.

Stewart joined Alli Miller, Stephanie Harper and Amanda Duncan to rewrite the ECU women's 400-yard medley relay record by nearly six seconds with a time of 3:42.59 and claim a fourth place finish.

The men's 400-yard medley relay team of Hunter Mehaffey, Tommy Ryan, Andrew Stoker and Junior Temotio earned a third place finish with an ECU varsity record time of 3:22.05.

The meet resumes at 11 a.m., Friday with the preliminaries of the 400-yard IM, 100-yard butterfly, 200-yard freestyle, 100-yard breast and 100-yard back. The men's 3-meter diving preliminaries will begin around 2 p.m,, followed by the women's 1-meter diving prelims. The finals for those events are slated to begin around 7 p.m.