2016 WOMEN AMERICA EAST CONFERENCE CHAMPIONSHIPS
- Thursday, February 11 – Saturday February 14
- Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, Massachusetts
- Defending Champions: UMBCefffttkteij
- Live Results
- Championship Central
Jess Harper started the final session of the meet in dominating fashion, winning her 3rd individual event of the meet, the 1650 free by a significant margin, touching in new conference record time 0f 16:33.54. Finishing behind her in a close race for 2nd were freshman Laura Massicotte of UMBC (17:01.25) and Brittany Moffatt of New Hampshire (17:01.77).
In the following event, it was New Hampshire again with the first place points, when Linnea Lemerise touched the pads in 2:00.28, just ahead of UMBC’s Aleasha Knight (2:00.77) and Vermont’s Danielle Rocheleau (2:02.56).
Liza Baykova of the Wildcats returned to the pool for her 3rd individual victory of the meet, winning the 100 free in 49.81, being the only swimmer of the meet to break 50 seconds and just missing the 5-yeard old conference record but 0.15 seconds. Behind her was Sarah Mantz of Vermont who finished in 51.38 and Kristie Langford of UMBC who finished in 51.57.
100 breast and 200 IM champions Emily Escobedo earned more first place points for the Retrievers, dominating the 200 breast in NCAA ‘A-cut’ and new conference and school record time, 2:06.21. After dropping 4 seconds off of her personal best from 2014, she finished more than 10 seconds ahead of 2nd place finisher, her teammate Kayla Lilly (2:18.28).
UMBC went on to post a 1-2 sweep in the 200 fly with Catherine Frediani and Hannah Sutherland finishing in times of 2:02.66 and 2:02.96 respectively, 3rd place went to Taryn McLaughlin of Binghamton (2:03.33).
In the 400 freestyle relay, it was New Hampshire who garnered the first place points, but it wasn’t enough to defeat the Retrievers overall. The A team of Baykova, Harper, Moffatt and Sarah Broderick clocked in in 3:25.40, just split seconds ahead of UMBC’s A team (3:25.58).
Final team scores:
- UMBC – 885.5
- New Hampshire – 824.5
- Vermont – 636.5
- Maine – 448
- Binghamton – 329.5
I know this was basically the first conference champ weekend of the season, but Escobedo’s 2:06.2 leads the nation and would have been 2nd at last year’s champs. And still a month to train and rest before this year’s NC’s. Nice to see some mid-majors mixing things up.
And if you buy into this sort of thing, it converts to a 2:24.0 (swimswam) or as fast as a 2:22.1 (swimming world…seems aggressive).