Tiffin University's swimming and diving teams opened their season at Saginaw Valley State, competing in a tri-meet with Malone and the Cardinals on the women's side and a duel meet against Malone's men.
Tiffin's women defeated Malone 119-105 while falling to the Cardinals 134-87.
Tiffin had a number of first place finishes, with the 400 medley relay team of Karolina Siwiec, Mari Johnson, Melinda Ulbrecht, and Alexandria Lehman winning by four-tenths of a second with a time of 4:09.37.
Lehman also won the 1000 freestyle race in 11:10.14, while Anastasiia Kvitchenko posted a win in the 200 freestyle in 2:00.48. Morgan Dunleavy also picked up two wins, totaling 227.7 points in the 1 meter diving event and also winning the 3 meter diving competition with 190.3 points.
Other standouts for the women include Alexandria Schuttinger (2nd in the 50 freestyle and 100 freestyle), Johnson (2nd in 200 IM), Kvitchenko (2nd in 500 freestyle), Siwiec (2nd in 200 backstroke), and the 200 freestyle relay team of Kvitchenko, Siwiec, Lehman, and Schuttinger (2nd).
On the men's side, Tiffin fell to Malone 146-81.
Rudolph Afzal won the 1 meter diving event with 175.9 points, while Mitchell Filka won the 3 meter dive with 121.55 points.
TU dropped a number of very close races, with Lucas Merigue Bernardo finishing second in the 50 freestyle by three-hundredths of a second and fourth in the 100 freestyle by .44. Pedro Voan Isschot was second in the 200 freestyle by .28 and second in the 100 freestyle by two-tenths of a second.
Ty Collins had two second place finishes - one in the 200 butterfly and another in the 200 backstroke, while Ygor Zanardo Bertolato was 3rd in the 50 freestyle.
The 200 freestyle relay team of Bertolato, Bernardo, Collins, and Van Isschot was also second.
"It was a very tough meet to open our competition season with," said Head Coach Margarita Kalmikova. "We had a lot of close races that were lost due to small mistakes. It's good to make them now, and learn from this experience. Dual meet season is all about education for the team. They work on a lot of details of their stroke and race strategy to perfect everything for the Conference Championship. Our divers have stepped up a lot. Half of their dives they did today, they have just learned in the past month.
"I was pleased to see our team compete the way they did during a very hard training phase. This team has a lot of talent and I'm excited to see what we can do as the season continues."
