Conference USA Championships: Day One

HOUSTON, Texas, February 24. DAY one of the 2010 Conference USA Swimming & Diving Championship and Invitational wrapped up Wednesday night at the CRWC Natatorium on the University of Houston campus. Four-time defending champion SMU is in the lead.

The Mustangs lead the championship team scoring after two events with 80 points, followed by Rice (68). There is a two-way tie for third with East Carolina (62) and Houston (62), while Tulane (52) and Marshall (40) sit in fifth and sixth, respectively. Women's Invitational members Cal State Bakersfield (50), North Dakota (50) and Northern Colorado (44) round out the women's team scoring.

SMU began the night by winning the 200 medley relay. The team of Gabriela Soza, Devon Callaghan, Denisa Smolenova and Justine Clark came in at 1:39.25, which was good for an NCAA `B' qualifying time for the Mustangs. Rice (1:42.27) and Houston (1:42.68) came in second and third, respectively, and also had NCAA `B' qualifying times.

In the night's final event, the 800-yard freestyle relay, SMU once again touched the wall first. The Mustangs' Sascha Van den Branden, Clark, Therese Svendsen, and Callaghan finished in 7:11.99, 11 seconds ahead of second place Rice (7:22.10). Both teams had NCAA `B' qualifying times.

East Carolina (7:26.74), Houston (7:30.93) and Tulane (7:33.98) round out the top-five times for the 800-freestyle relay. Men's teams from league schools East Carolina and SMU along with Hawaii, Cal State Bakersfield and North Dakota are also competing in the C-USA Men's Invitational. SMU leads that event after day one with 113 points, followed by Cal State Bakersfield with 90 points. Hawaii sits in third with 88 points, while North Dakota (60) is in fourth and East Carolina (46) is in fifth. The meet resumes at 10 a.m., Thursday with the preliminaries of the 500-yard freestyle, 200-yard individual medley and the 50-yard freestyle. The women's 3-meter diving preliminaries will begin around 1 p.m. The finals for those events are slated to begin around 6 p.m.

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