RESULTS
EVANSTON, Ill. -- Northwestern honored its two seniors, Madeleine Klichowski (Chicago, Ill./Loyola Academy) and Valerie Nubbe (Huntsville, Ala./Huntsville), Friday prior to its meet against Milwaukee at the Norris Aquatics Center, then went out and earned a decisive 153-81 win over the Panthers that featured a pool record swim in the 200 free relay to close the afternoon.
NU now is 6-4 on the dual-meet season after the victory. The two teams competed in a less-common 13-event order instead of the more familiar 16-event order, with the 100 yard backstroke, butterfly and breaststroke cut from the program. NU won all 11 of the swimming events in the dominating victory.
Northwestern's 400 medley relays set an early tone for the meet, getting a 1-2 sweep of the event and a winning margin for the `A' squad of nearly nine full seconds. Lacey Locke (Carmel, Ind./Carmel), Julianne Kurke (Atlanta, Ga./Parkview), Maddy Sims (Downers Grove, Ill./Downers Grove) and Annika Winsnes (Singapore/United World College) touched in a winning time of 3:44.98, while Anna Keane (Edmonds, Wash./Meadowdale), Mary Warren (Hartland, Wis./Arrowhead), Julia Pratt (Vincennes, Ind./Vincennes Rivet) and Aja Malone (Acworth, Ga./Allatoona) followed in 3:53.75 to own a four-second cushion on Milwaukee's top team, which was third.
Ellen Anderson (Montgomery Village, Md./Gaithersburg) steadily pulled away in the 1,000 free with high 30.00 splits to win her first dual-meet race of the year with a season-best 10:15.05, 10.15 seconds ahead of Emily Launer (DeKalb, Ill./Rosary) in second.
Lauren Abruzzo (Denver, Colo./Kent Denver) led a convoy of four Wildcats to victory in the 200 freestyle. Malone, Megan Purdy (Boulder City, Nev./Boulder City) and Danielle Elliott (Barrington, Ill./Barrington) followed in second through fourth, respectively.
Warren sprinted to a comfortable 23.22 and a victory in the 50 free while the senior Nubbe was a season-best second place with a 24.00. Then, prior to the meet's first break, Locke topped Abruzzo and Melissa Postoll (Acworth, Ga./Kennesaw Mountain) by nearly four full seconds in the 200 IM for a 1-2-3 NU victory.
Ellen Stello (Shorewood, Wis./Shorewood) continued her season-long dominance of the 200 fly with a 2:00.87 to win the race over teammate Georgie Pettibone (Santa Rosa, Calif./Analy) by 7.37 seconds. In the 100 free, Winsnes' 50.75 led Sims and Pratt to the wall in 1-2-3 order for the Wildcats.
Locke's 2:01.73 in the 200 back gave her another resounding event victory over second-place Postoll's 2:05.12. Postoll held off a hard charge from Milwaukee's Sara Bentley to give NU the top two sweep.
Stello cruised to her second individual win with a 4:53.79 in the 500 free to top Purdy's second-place 5:01.05 entering the second break of the meet. After that break, Kurke won the 200 breast by 6.5 seconds with a 2:18.98.
Freshman Mashal Hashem (Potomac, Md./Winston Churchill) was Northwestern's lone diver competing in this meet; she placed second in the 3-meter event with a season-best 245.10 and second in the 1-meter with a 219.98.
The entire meet set the stage for NU's team of Warren, Keane, Pratt and Winsnes in the 200 free relay, who entered the event with designs of taking Missouri's Norris Aquatics Center record of 1:31.67 set in 2012 off the board. Warren went out in a career-best-matching NCAA `B' provisional qualification 50 free cut of 22.87 with Keane, Pratt and Winsnes roaring the rest of the way for a 1:31.07, lowering that record by a full six tenths of a second.
Northwestern returns to action at 11 a.m. CT Saturday, Jan. 24, at Iowa.