Oakland Atop the SUmmit

Oakland is in first place on both the men’s and women’s sides after the first day of the 2008 Summit League Swimming and Diving Championships at the Recreation and Athletics Center on the OU campus.

On the men’s side, Oakland is in first place with 337 points, followed by Centenary and Western Illinois with 167 and 154 points, respectively. Rounding out the scoring are Eastern Illinois (130), IUPUI (94) and South Dakota State (55).

On the women’s side, Oakland tops the chart with 289 points, followed by Western Illinois in second place with 155 points. Meanwhile, Centenary is third with 137 points and South Dakota State is fourth with 120 points. Rounding out the scoring are Eastern Illinois (73) and IUPUI (71).

For the men, three championship meet records were broken. Anthony Holzhauer of Western Illinois scored 317.55 points to win the 1-meter springboard. He broke the old record of 311.40 set by teammate Eric Campbell in 2006.

Zoltan Horvath of Oakland swam 1:48.26 to win the 200 individual medley for the third straight time. That broke the championship meet record of 1:50.15 that he set last year and The Summit League record of 1:49.06 set by Scott Dickens in 2003. It was Horvath’s ninth individual Summit League title, tying the record held by Jim Borkowski of Missouri State.

Day one ended with an NCAA B standard performance by Oakland in the 400 medley relay. The squad of Marcin Unold, Horvath, Chris Tansel and Andy Kellogg swam 3:13.54 to shatter the league and league meet record of 3:18.35 set by Oakland in 2006. It was also just 1.58 seconds away from the automatic qualifying time.

Additional Summit League champions were Aaron Holdsworth of Oakland in the 500 free, Unold in the 50 free and Oakland’s Nick Bonucchi, Kellogg, Chris Tansel and Bryon Tansel in the 200 free relay.

On the women’s side, Oakland set league championship records in both relays. The 200 free relay of Kelli Dewey, Sarah Ludema, Riley Rigoli and Chrissy Hager came home in 1:35.46 to just break the record. The old mark of 1:35.73 was set by OU last year.

In the 400 medley relay, Agnes Solan, Emily Wike, Kristen Hamilton and Ludema swam 3:47.51 to break the record of 3:49.05 set by Oakland in 2006. Solan led off with a 54.65 in the 100 back, an NCAA B standard. She missed the A cut by 18/100ths of a second.

Winning individual events were Sophia Gustafsson of Oakland in the 500 free, Ludema in the 50 free and Solan in the 200 IM.

The Summit League Championships continue Friday, Feb. 23, at the Recreation and Athletics Center (RAC). The preliminaries begin at 11 a.m. (Eastern), while the finals start at 6:30 p.m. (Eastern).