B Cut Relay Highlights Wittenberg Performances At Last Chance Meet

GAMBIER, Ohio — For most of the members of the Wittenberg swimming and diving teams, the end of the 2010-11 season came a week ago at the NCAC Championships.

February 19, 2011

GAMBIER, Ohio — For most of the members of the Wittenberg Tiger swimming and diving teams, the end of the 2010-11 season came a week ago at the North Coast Athletic Conference Championship meet. For others, another week of hard work resulted in a series of near-misses of NCAA provisional qualifying times at a Last Chance Meet hosted by Kenyon — with the notable exception of the women's 200-yard medley relay team, which earned an NCAA B Cut for a second straight week.

The four members of the relay posted times that beat the provisional qualifying standard twice on the day, although neither topped their school record mark established a week earlier. The quartet of freshman Sarah Wilson (Centennial, Colo./Arapahoe), freshman Molly Gustafson (West Hartford, Conn./Conard), junior Keaton Hannon (Peachtree City, Ga./McIntosh) and sophomore Ward McNulty (New Trier, Ill./Glencoe) posted times of 1:47.80 and 1:47.61, both topping the standard of 1:48.00.

The members of the relay will now have to wait and watch results from other meets around the country to see if their time holds up and earns them an invitation to the NCAA Division III Championship meet March 23-26 in Knoxville, Tenn. Coming into the weekend, Wittenberg ranked ninth nationally in the event with a time of 1:47.02.

Keaton Hannon

Gustafson is also provisionally qualified in both the 100-yard and 200-yard breaststroke events, ranking in the low 20s nationally in each at the start of this weekend's action.

Gustafson was unable to lower her time in the 100-yard breaststroke, touching the wall in 1:06.85. Hannon just missed the qualifying standard in the 100-yard butterfly with a time of 58.48, while McNulty turned in a strong swim in the 50-yard freestyle in a time of 24.55.

On the men's side, few Tigers made the trip. Freshman Jon Drewsen (Fond du Lac, Wisc./Fond du Lac) turned in the closest result to a national qualifying standard, posting a time of 21.95 in the 50-yard freestyle.