BOSTON, Mass. – The Regis College Swimming & Diving teams competed in two days of competition at Holmes Sports Center as Simmons College hosted the 2014 Great Northeast Athletic Conference Championship this past weekend. The women tied their finish from last year by placing in second place while the men outdid their third place rank from 2013 by finishing in second.
"Today we had tremendous swims, several lifetime and season best times, more swimmers qualified for the NE championship and the ECAC championship," said Coach James Sweeney. "Haley continued her dominance in the breaststrokes with two more school records today in the 50 and 200 breaststrokes. The men continued to excel highlighted by the 800 free relay obliterating the GNAC and school records. I am very excited of how we have progressed this season so far. This is our mid-point meet that we focus on the first semester and we have had remarkable improvement this semester. I am very excited about our training coming up after finals and the rest of our season as we look towards our championship meets in February."
On the women's side, Haley Bowen (Litchfield, N.H.) placed first, set a new school and GNAC record in the 200 yard breaststroke with a time of 2.29:50. With that time, Bowen qualified for the ECAC Championships in the breaststroke. Bowen also finished in second in the 50 yard breaststroke by finishing the race in 31.73, which was a new school record and also was just under the new GNAC record of 31.28. The 800 yard freestyle relay squad of Jessica Higgins (Peabody, Mass.) , Bowen, Shannan O'Neil (Lowell, Mass) and Ashlyn Deroche (North Reading, Mass.) placed in second in the relay with a time of 8:31.27 which was below the new GNAC record time of 8:27.77 that was set by host Simmons College.
For the men, the 800 yard freestyle relay team of Nick Rainville (Reading, Mass.) Kiet Luong (Malden, Mass.), A.J. Graf (Newton, Mass.) and Cassidy Bastinelli (Newton, Mass.) completely obliterated the GNAC record by 26 seconds and set a new school record in the process by finishing the finals in 7:20.75. Luong also set a new GNAC mark in the 200 yard individual medley with a time of 2:03.15.
The Swimming & Diving teams return to the pool after the winter break when they travel back to Simmons for a meet with Colby-Sawyer on January 17th at 1:00 p.m.