Feb. 22, 2007
PRINCETON, N.J. - The Navy men's swimming and diving team enjoyed one of its best opening days at the Eastern Intercollegiate Swimming League Championship in recent years Thursday, totaling 266.5 points and standing in fourth place at the nine-team meet being held this weekend in Princeton, N.J.
Princeton leads the meet with a score of 442 points, Harvard is second with 353.5 points and Cornell is in third place with 304 points.
Navy's 266.5 points places the Mids one-half of a point in front of Columbia and 6.5 points ahead of sixth-place Yale.
"We quietly moved up all night," said Navy men's swimming head coach Bill Roberts. "It was great to have as many guys advance to the evening session as we did. I'm very pleased by our performances, both this morning and tonight."
After the evening began with the Mids placing eighth in the 200 freestyle relay, a trio of Navy swimmers scored points in the 500 freestyle. Danny Flemming (Sr., Loganville, Ga.) placed seventh in the 'B' final with a 4:32.84, Kevin Mukri (Sr., Silver Spring, Md.) won the 'C' final with a clocking of 4:28.92, and David Guthmann (So., Waxhaw, N.C.) placed eighth in the 'C' final with a time of 4:37.53.
Mukri's time in the event was both a career best and the seventh-fastest time recorded by a Navy swimmer.
Four Navy swimmers were then scattered into each of the three finals for the 200 individual medley. The Navy results were highlighted by Adam Meyer (Fr., Bethesda, Md.) tying for fifth place in the 'A' final with a time of 1:50.93, a time which left him just two-hundredths of a second shy of the 11-year old school record of 1:50.73 set by Ian Johnston.
The additional Navy results in the event featured Christopher Jenkins (Jr., Chicago, Ill.) placing seventh in the 'B' final, and Billy Vey (So., Huntersville, N.C.) and Kevin Kysiak (Jr., Western Springs, Ill.) placing first and sixth, respectively, in the 'C' final.
The last remaining individual swimming event of the night saw Joe Unruh (So., Orinda, Calif.), Alex Oldenkamp (So., Coppell, Texas) and Preston Mihalko (So., Chesapeake, Va.) place sixth-seventh-eighth in the 'B' final of the 50 freestyle.
"It was a solid day for Joe," said Roberts. "He opened our 200 free relay this morning with a career-best time of 20.93."
Three Mids also finished among the final eight divers in the one-meter springboard event. Jon Galinski (So., Phoenix, Md.) placed sixth with a score of 270.75, Kevin Teague (Sr., Lexington, Ky.) totaled 260.55 points to finish in seventh place, and Adam Niekras (Jr., Liverpool, N.Y.) scored 243.10 points to place eighth.
Navy's night came to an end with an eighth-place finish in the 400 medley relay. The Navy foursome of Mukri, Kysiak, Meyer and Matt Wood (Jr., Evergreen Park, Ill.) produced a time of 3:21.44 in the event, the third-best clocking in school history. Additionally, Mukri's opening 100 backstroke time of 49.30 breaks his own school record by one-half of a second and establishes a new Patriot League record by three-hundredths of a second.
