A banner week for national records at the NCAA Division II Championships kept right on rolling Friday night, with Queens sophomore Patricia Castro knocking down her third national mark of the meet so far.
Castro crushed the 500 free field with a 4:43.37, hacking more than two full seconds off of the old NCAA record. That old record was 4:45.69, and was set back in 2008, before the outlawing of full-body tech suits.
Castro has been on tear this week, breaking the 200 IM record Wednesday and the 200 free yesterday. She’s also slated to swim the 100 free tomorrow, where she’s seeded just four tenths off the national record.
The impressive part of this 500 free race was how dialed in Castro got in her pacing. From the 150-mark to the 450-mark, Castro put each of her splits in the narrow window between 28.82 and 28.93. That’s six different 50 splits she posted all within a tenth of one another, and her 28.93 early in the race turned out to be her slowest split of the entire night.
Castro also closed in an excellent 27.77 to bury a field she’d already pretty well dominated.