Raymond Miller continued to etch his name into the Pacific swimming record books at the Osborn Aquatic Center on day two of the 2015 Northwest Conference Swimming Championships, breaking the oldest record in the Pacific men’s swimming record book on Saturday.
Miller (Fr., Portland, Ore.) continued his successful debut season at Pacific with a spot on the All-NWC First Team and a shattering a 10-year old school record in the 200-yard freestyle.
Miller broke Nathan Smith's 2005 school record in the 200-yard freestyle of 1:45.12 with a preliminary time of 1:44.27, before improving on his time again with a 1:43.65 in the finals. Miller, racing against two heavyweights in Karl Mering and Clark Sun, did not look out of place as the freshman finished third behind Mering and Sun in the 200-yard freestyle finals.
The Boxers opened the finals with an eighth place finish of 1:43.16 in the 200-yard medley relay, which featured Dylan Tohl (Fr., Tillamook, Ore.), Michael Sakai (Fr., Honolulu, Hawaii), Charles Morse (So., Forest Grove, Ore.) and Spencer Chandler (Sr., Weiser, Idaho).
Sakai participated individually in the consolation finals of the 400-yard individual medley and placed fifth in his race with a 4:23.86. Jack Lloyd (Jr., Portland, Ore.), who finished just out of finals qualification in the prelims, won the consolation finals of the 200-yard freestyle with a 1:44.43.
The Boxers will wrap-up the 2015 NWC Swimming Championships on Sunday, with preliminaries set for 10 a.m. and the finals scheduled for 5 p.m.
For the second-straight night Katie Porter earned a Northwest Conference title at the Osborn Aquatic Center on day two of the 2015 Northwest Conference Swimming Championships.
Porter (Sr., McMinnville, Ore.) headlined the finals for Pacific for the second-straight night as she won the 100-yard butterfly title for the second time in her career and picking up her second conference championship in two days.
To get to the finals for the 100-yard butterfly, Porter had to live up to her spot as the fourth seeded swimmer entering the preliminary session on Saturday. Improving her season-best time by nearly three-full seconds, Porter won her heat and swam the top time in all of qualifying with a 56.64 showing.
Porter's preliminary swim bettered her previous school record of 57.11, which she set winning the 2013 NWC title in the 100-yard butterfly. Not only did Porter set a Pacific record in the 100-yard butterfly with her time of 56.64 on Saturday, she was the only women's swimmer in the conference to earn a NCAA B-Cut Qualifying Time in the event.
The finals saw Porter top the podium by nearly a full second with a time of 56.76, ahead of second place finisher Toni Castillo of Pacific Lutheran. Castillo posted a time of 57.62 as she finished second in the event.
Porter's victory came in the third event of the finals on the women's side of the meet, which opened with the 200-yard medley relay. Pacific's relay team of Janae Sargent (Jr., Redding, Calif.), Kayla Knock (Fr., Colorado Springs, Colo.), Stacie Sruble (Sr., Albany, Ore.) and Amanda Clark (Sr., Olympia, Wash.) finished seventh with a 1:53.91 in the finals.
Rachel Webster (So., Normandy Park, Wash.) was Pacific's first finalist of the day, earning All-Northwest Conference Second Team honors with a sixth-place finish at 4:48.17.
Following Porter's 100-yard butterfly championship, Pacific's next showing in the finals came in the 200-yard freestyle, which featured one of the tightest finishes of the evening in the women's meet. Clark battled Alisa Stang of Whitworth and Hanna Armstrong of Pacific Lutheran throughout each meter of the race, but Stang managed to outreach Clark and Armstrong for victory in the event with a time of 1:54.18.
Clark followed Stang with 1:54.68 to earn second place and All-NWC First Team honors, while Armstrong's 1:54.76 put her on the podium in third place.
The finals wrapped for Pacific with a fifth-place finish in the 800-yard freestyle relay as Clark, Porter, Webster and Amber Chase (Sr., Tigard, Ore.) with a time of 7:57.27.
Struble won the consolation finals of the 400-yard individual medley, which also featured Eli Cruz (Fr., Castro Valley, Calif.) with an eighth-place finish. Struble, also competed in the 100-yard butterfly consolation finals and placed fourth.
Chase was the second place finisher in the 200-yard freestyle consolation finals, one event before Knock finished third in the 100-yard breaststroke consolation finals.
