Campbell University won the Liberty TYR ’85 Invite over the weekend, with UNC-Asheville second and host Liberty third.
You can see full meet results here.
The showdown of three women’s programs took place from Thursday to Saturday in Lynchburg, Virginia.
It was Campbell’s first head-to-head win over CCSA rival Liberty since 2011, though it appears both Campbell and Liberty competed without divers. The two teams will rematch in a dual meet on January 23 at Liberty.
Campbell swept all five relays on the weekend. Their 800 free relay crushed the field by six and a half seconds, going 7:34.31 on a 1:51.6 leadoff from junior Annie Sanchez. Sanchez also won the individual 200 free in 1:51.35.
Meanwhile Colleen Renshaw split 22.6 to anchor the 200 free relay to victory in 1:34.26. And she split 50.96 on the end of a 400 free relay that won in 3:26.77.
Campbell also swept the butterfly races individually. Senior Simone Palomo was 55.60 to win the 100 fly and sophomore Lauren Shoemaker 2:03.61 to win the 200 fly. Palomo split 55.0 on a winning 400 medley relay and 25.3 on the winning 200 medley relay.
Freshman Maria Kristjansdottir won the 200 breast in 2:19.45, winning by a second and a half.
Liberty did take six event wins, including a backstroke sweep from senior Peyton Keiner. She was 54.70 and 1:58.39, winning the latter by almost four seconds.
Senior Arielle Arnett took the 1650 free in 17:37.45, while sophomore Eva Suggs handled the 500 free field in 5:02.44. The other Flame winner was sophomore Jessica Schellenboom, who was 1:03.66 in the 100 breast.
UNC-Asheville swept both diving events with freshman Jade Canady. And sophomore Delaney Carlton was the sprinter to beat, going 23.07 to win the 50 free and 50.91 to win the 100 free.
Liberty wore dual meet suits for prelims and most of finals. A few of their girls wore tech suits for finals.
CU and UNCA suited up for both prelims and finals… If CU and UNCA didn’t suit up, then these teams beating LU would’ve been much more impressive.
I never get sick of college swimmers blaming losing meets on “I wasn’t trying as hard to win as the other team was” and wearing that as a badge of honor.
Don’t ever lose that.
There is value to the argument that Liberty is not focused on this specific meet with a goal of working to a future competition. If everyone was “trying” as hard to win then Liberty will finish behind Campbell and Asheville at their conference meet.
So, why didn’t the liberty divers compete?
One of them tested positive for COVID-19, so they were all supposed to be in quarantine…
Has the diving tower been fully replaced and tested?
Demolished, yes…Rebuild scheduled for March. We wanted to use the 1/3-m springboards this season. FYI I am not “Power Tower.”
https://www.liberty.edu/flames/index.cfm?PID=36963&newsID=23690
I can also let everyone know we had doubled the 3 days prior to this meet and did heavy deadlifts as well
go LU
Campbell didn’t even take a bus to the meet, they ran with 40 lb bags of sand over their shoulders.
you competed, you lost.
Campbell competed without divers as well, so it looks like Campbell beat Liberty straight up.