GREENSBORO, N.C. – A quartet of individual All-American performances, including two from Trinity University’s first-year swimmer Neely Burns, highlighted the opened two days of the 2023 Division III Swimming and Diving National Championships for SCAC athletes.
Burns burst onto the national scene Wednesday when she qualified fourth in the 200-yard IM with an SCAC open record time of 2:02.03. She earned All-American honors, finishing seventh in the finals, hitting the wall in 2:02.16. Her seventh-place finish in the 200 IM is tied for the best in school history for that event, tying Sarah Scott’s seventh-place finish at the 1997 NCAA meet.
Other individual highlights from the opening day of competition on the women’s side included Trinity’s Emma Hagan finishing 46th (24.14) in the 50-yard freestyle and Colorado College’s Kate Brush taking home 56th (24.45) in the same event.
Trinity’s 200-medley relay squad comprised of Julie Schwam, Josie Gillentine, Caroline Myers and Juliana Wiehrdt finished 24th with a time of 1:46.28.
In the diving well, Trinity’s Alexis Radhakrishnan finished 26th in the women’s 3-meter competition with a score of 333.50.
Burns collected her second All-American honor on day two when she hit the wall second in the women’s 400-yard IM. She went into the final session Thursday evening as the top qualifier in the event with a time of 4:21.00, only to set a new SCAC open mark with a time of 4:18.50 to earn silver medal honors.
The second All-American performance on Thursday evening came when Colorado College’s Brush finished seventh in the 100-yard fly. Brush set a new SCAC open mark in the prelims with a time of 54.93, good enough to qualify fifth, before taking home seventh in the finals with a time of 55.21. After earning Honorable Mention All-American honors last year as junior, Brush becomes just the second female swimmer in school history to earn AA honors in multiple seasons (Taylor Jaramillo – 2004, ’06).
Other highlights from day two include, Trinity’s Hagan finishing 35th in the 200-yard freestyle (1:54.07) and the Tigers 400-yard medley relay quartet of Schwam, Gillentine, Meyers and Hagan securing 23rd with a time of 3:55.10.
On the men’s side, Trinity’s 200-yard medley relay team made up of Michael Kohl, Kendal Southwell, Caleb Manifold and Nathaniel Early earned Honorable Mention All-American honors to headline day one. The quartet qualified 16th with a time of 1:30.05 before staking claim to 12th in the final, hitting the wall in 1:29.42.
Kohl just nearly missed out on qualifying in the 50-yard freestyle, finishing 17th with a time of 20.29, just .03 from earning Honorable Mention All-American accolades. In that same event, Manifold finished 42nd with a time of 20.74.
During day two, Kohl highlighted the individual efforts earning Honorable Mention All-American honors with a 16th-place finish in the 100-yard fly. He qualified 12th with a time of 48.05 before posting a time of 48.47 in the finals. In that same event, his teammate Caleb Manifold finished 32nd with a time of 49.12.
Early’s 29th-place finish (1:40.70) in the 200-yard freestyle rounded out the individual performances from day two.
In the relay events, Trinity’s Matteo Lanzara joined Southwell, Kohl and Early to earn Honorable Mention All-American honors in the 400-medley relay when the squad finished 14th with a time of 3:19.52.
Following the opening two days of the NCAA Championships, Trinity currently sits in 19th-place on the women’s side with 29 total points, while Colorado College is in 26th with 11 points. On the men’s side, Trinity is in 20th with 17 total points.
