Coming home from the three-day Bucknell Invite, the Georgetown swimming and diving team celebrates second place for the men’s team, third place for the women’s team, and nine new program records.
Through all 40 events, the men’s team won a total of 1214.5 points behind first place Towson University (1321) and in front of third place La Salle (1083.5). The women’s team won 1209.5 points behind second place Bucknell (1322) and first place Towson (1545.5).
Big East swimmer of the week and Georgetown freshman Drew Carbone broke two Georgetown records on the first day of racing. He managed to reach the wall in 1:49.83 minutes during the 200-yard IM breaking the record by a mere 0.17 seconds. Carbone later kicked off the 400-yard Medley Relay with a 49.43 100-yard Backstroke split that surpassed the previous record of 50.07 seconds. On Saturday, he broke that record twice more, first in the preliminaries at 49.38 and again in the finals, dropping the program record to 49.13.
Sophomore Christina Barrett continued the success by placing first in the 500-yard Freestyle and breaking fellow teammate Christine Ryan’s 2016 record of 4:54.14 by coming in at 4:52.24 on Friday.
Also on Friday, sophomore Jack Calderwood, freshman Andrew Stange, junior Jacob Kohlhoff, and junior Seth Maslowski fought for second place in 200-yard Freestyle relay at 1:23.26, only 0.70 seconds off of first. Sophomore diver Elizabeth Miller placed second in the 3-meter Dive. Both the men’s and women’s teams finished the first day at second place overall.
Saturday racing generated three first place wins and three new records. First, in the 800-yard Freestyle relay, sophomore Terry Johnson, Carbone, senior Daniel Ross, and Stange finished with a time of 6:43.74 with second place La Salle finishing 0.63 seconds later. Then, senior Molly Fitzpatrick reached the wall in the 100-yard Breastroke in 1:01.65 placing first by just 0.16 seconds. The final first place win and additional record breaker was Stange in the 200-yard Freestyle at 1:38.51 with teammate Kohlhoff coming in a couple seconds later in second. In the overall scoring, the men jumped up to first while women dropped to third.
The final day of racing yielded the last three program records. Carbone’s fifth and final record-breaker was in the 200-yard Backstroke preliminaries with his 1:47.39 swim shaving one second from the record. His final score was off his preliminary mark by 0.24 seconds and he went on to place second. Then, Stange broke his second record of the weekend in the 100-yard Freestyle by 0.22 seconds with a 45.16 time. The last new Georgetown record was made by sophomore Lauren Henasey in the 200-yard Butterfly with a 2:01.29 that surpassed the previous record of 2:03.04. By the final event, the men’s team dropped to second place overall and the women maintained third.
In terms of format, the Bucknell Invite “was a dry run for what our Big East championships should be,” Head Coach Jack Leavitt said. With only three meets left before they head to the championships in Geneva, Ohio, the Hoyas are working to mentally and physically deepen their performance as a team.
