Amherst College’s Kendra Stern set a new NCAA Championships record in the 500 freestyle event and Washington and Jefferson College’s Kaitlyn Orstein also set a new meet record in winning the 200-yard individual medley to highlight first-day action at the 27th Annual NCAA Division III Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships at the University of Miami’s (Ohio) Corwin M. Nixon Aquatic Center.

Kenyon College, the defending champion and winners of 21 of the last 24 national titles, totaled 205 points after six opening-day events for an 83-point lead over second-place Amherst College (122). Denison University (114) is third, Emory University is in fourth (72), and Washington University-St. Louis and Williams College are tied for fifth (71).

Perhaps the best performance of the night belonged to AmherstCollege freshman Kendra Stern, who obliterated the NCAA record in the 500-yard freestyle. Stern took the title with a time of 4:52.34, nearly three seconds off the old record set by DenisonUniversity's Tamara Carty in 2002.

Stern capped her night off in the final event of Thursday's action as a part of the winning 400-yard freestyle relay, when the Amherst quartet touched the wall in 3:46.87.

In the 200-yard individual medley, Orstein led the field to the wall in championship record time. After breaking the record during the morning preliminaries (2:01.67), she bettered that time in the finals (2:00.27), nipping last year’s event runner-up Brittany Sasser of Amherst (2:01.27).  It was Orstein's third win in the event.

Rounding out the event winners, Kenyon began the night winning the 200-yard freestyle relay (1:33.55), Kendall Swett of Tufts took home the 1-meter diving competition (455.20), and Emory’s Ruth Westby grabbed the 50-yard freestyle (23.40).

Action in the three-day meet continues on Friday and Saturday with the preliminaries set to begin at 11:00 a.m. and the finals at 6:30 p.m.

 

 Women - Team Scores     
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  1 Kenyon College                     KEN             205
  2 Amherst College                    AMH             122    
  3 Denison University                 DEN             114
  4 Emory University                   EMORY            72
  5 Washington University              WASHU            71
  5 Williams College                   WILL             71
  7 Calvin College                     CALV             64
  8 Depauw University                  DEPA             62
  9 Middlebury College                 MIDD             52
 10 Wisconsin, La Crosse               UWL              34
 11 Whitworth College                  WHITW            29
 12 Suny Geneseo                       GENE             28
 13 Colby College                      COLBY            24   
 14 Luther College                     LUTH             23 
 15 Carthage College                   CARTH            20
 15 Tufts University                   TUFTS            20 
 15 Washington and Jefferson           W&J              20 
 18 Suny New Paltz                     SNP              18
 18 Claremont McKenna-Mudd-Scripps     C-M-S            18
 20 Lake Forest College                LFC              17 
 21 Massachusetts Institute of Tec     MIT              16 
 21 Wheaton College (Illinois)         WHE-I            16
 23 Nazareth College                   NAZ              15 
 24 Smith College                      SMITH            13 
 25 Suny Fredonia                      FRED             12 
 25 Hope College                       HOPE             12 
 25 Trinity University (Texas)         TRIN             12 
 28 Carnegie Mellon University         CMU              11 
 28 Carleton College                   CARL             11 
 30 Ithaca College                     ITHA              8 
 31 Vassar College                     VASS              6 
 31 Bates College                      BATES             6 
 33 Wellesley College                  WELL              5 
 34 UC Santa Cruz                      UCSC              4 
 34 Springfield College                SPFLD             4 
 34 St. Olaf College                   OLAF              4 
 37 Union College                      UNION             1