March 8, 2008
ANNAPOLIS, Md. -- Three Mids recorded top-10 finishes to lead Navy to a fifth-place finish in the EISL Championships hosted by Harvard University. The Mids scored 869.5 points to place fifth in the nine-team event, Navy's best finish since the 2000-01 season.
"I'm happy with our performances and we posted our highest point total in several years," said Navy head coach Bill Roberts. "We just didn't have enough to compete with Yale and Columbia today."
Freshman Olaf Olson had Navy's top-scoring performance of the day with a fourth-place effort in the three-meter diving competition, to help him earn co-diver of the meet accolades. Olson racked up 26 points for the Mids after a score of 303.10 in the event. The finish helped Navy score 57 points in the event, as Jon Galinski placed 11th (279.00) and Adam Niekras was 12th (271.15).
Sophomore Adam Meyer continued his stellar season with a school-record showing in the 200-yard butterfly. The Bethesda, Md., native, who broke the school record yesterday in the 400-yard IM, shattered another school record today, with a time of 1:47.70 in the 200-fly in the "A" final. The time was good enough for a fifth-place finish and broke his own school record by almost two-and-a-half seconds. In addition, his time was good enough for an NCAA "B" cut qualifying effort.
He and teammates Jesse Cohen (12th; 4th in "B" Final / 1:50.26) and Patrick Veltman (17th; 1st in "C" Final / 1:51.51) helped Navy score 49 points in the event. Both Cohen's and Veltman's times were personal bests.
Navy's last top-10 performance came from freshman Erik Hunter in the 1650-yard freestyle. Hunter recorded the second-best clocking in school history with a time of 15:29.86, which was also good enough for an NCAA "B" cut qualification time. Hunter broke the school record in yesterday's 1,000-yard freestyle.
Navy also got strong efforts in the 200-yard backstroke as Billy Vey (12th; 4th in "B" Final / 1:50.82) and Andrew Hetzner (15th; 7th in "B" Final / 1:52.23) combined to score 27 points, and in the 100-yard freestyle as Alex Oldenkamp (11th; 3rd in "B" Final / 45.54), Preston Mihalko (21st; 5th in "C" Final / 46.17) and Chris Jenkins (22nd; 6th in "C" Final / career-best 46.20) scored a combined 23 points for the team.
Kevin Kysiak and Ari Molina finished 16th (8th in "B" Final / 2:09.31) and 20th (4th in "C" Final / 2:08.01) in the 200-yard breaststroke.
Lastly, Navy's 400-yard freestyle relay team of Chris Jenkins, Mihalko, Jack Curran and Oldenkamp placed eighth with a time of 3:02.77.
With its highest finish in seven years at the EISL Championships, Roberts was pleased with the season.
"I'm very pleased with the season and the output that our guys gave this year," said Roberts. "We are already looking forward to getting ready for next year."
# GO NAVY #
