HOUSTON, Texas, February 26. DAY one of the 2009 Conference USA Swimming & Diving Championship and Invitational wrapped up on Wednesday evening at the CRWC Natatorium on the campus of the University of Houston with two dominating performances by three-time defending champion SMU.<\/p>\n
Propelled by those showings, the Mustangs lead the invitational team scoring after two events with 80 points, followed by Rice (66) and invitee member North Dakota (64). League members Houston (62), East Carolina (56) and Marshall (52) sit in fourth, fifth and sixth place, respectively.<\/p>\n
Women’s Invitational members Northern Colorado (48) and Cal State Bakersfield (22) round out the women’s team scoring.<\/p>\n
SMU began the night by setting a new record in the 200 medley relay. The team of Therese Svendsen, Devon Callaghan, Elzanne Werth and Petra Klosova smashed the old record, which was set by the Mustangs in 2006, by almost three seconds, touching the wall in 1:38.08, good for an NCAA `B’ qualifying time.<\/p>\n
Invitational member North Dakota took second (1.41.67), while the Rice quartet of Angela Wo, Pam Zelnick, Skylar Craig and Carly Miller claimed the bronze medal in 1:41.98.<\/p>\n
In the night’s final event, the 800-yard freestyle relay, SMU once again touched the wall first. The Mustangs’ Candace Blackman, Sasha Van den Branden, Petra Klosova and Christy-Leigh Lategan finished in 7:07, 11 seconds ahead of second place Rice (7:18.01).<\/p>\n
The squad of Sasha Schwendenwein, Kim Eeson, Olga Bordatcheva and Andrea Pa’lmai of host Houston took third place in the final relay, touching in 7:21.60.<\/p>\n
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 114 points, followed by Hawai’i with 112 points. North Dakota sits in third with 81 points, while East Carolina (72) is in fourth and Cal State Bakersfield (56) is in fifth.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
All-session tickets are available for only $25 for adults and $10 for youth. Single-day tickets are available for $10 for adults and $5 for students with ID. Youth includes children from 3 years old to high school. Children who are 2 years old and younger are admitted free.<\/p>\n
All students from Conference USA schools are admitted free with a valid student ID.<\/p>\n
Fans should note that cash only will be accepted at the Tickets table.<\/p>\n
Gates will open, and tickets will be sold beginning one hour prior to the meet. In addition, a wide variety of Championship merchandise will be available near the Tickets table.<\/p>\n
Special thanks to Conference USA for contributing this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
HOUSTON, Texas, February 26. DAY one of the 2009 Conference USA Swimming & Diving Championship and Invitational wrapped up on Wednesday evening at the CRWC Natatorium on the campus of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-college","category-zzzzzzzzz"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n