Georgie Pettibone moved into eight place on NU's all-time top times list in the 200 breast Saturday.
Live Results
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- In four preliminary events Saturday morning at the 2015 Big Ten Championships, likely two Wildcats per race earned second swims in the evening finals session -- including two in scoring heats.
The final session at the 2015 Big Ten Championships gets underway tonight at 5:30 p.m. CT championship heats in Saturday's individual events plus the meet's concluding 400 free relay. Prior to 5:30, early timed finals of the 1,650 free will take place with the last heat kicking off the evening's official session.
The platform diving event also will be held, but NU is competing without divers at this year's meet due to injury and illness.
A pair of Wildcats swam NCAA `B' cuts in the 200 back prelims and are nearly certain to come back and swim in the bonus final of the event Saturday night. Sophomore Lacey Locke (Carmel, Ind./Carmel) finished 24th overall in 1:58.43, which was a tad off her previous season-best in the event. Meanwhile, her classmate Melissa Postoll (Acworth, Ga./Kennesaw Mountain) turned in a career-best swim and the first NCAA `B' cut of her career with a 1:58.70 to place 25th overall. The time moves Postoll into eighth on NU's all-time top-10 in the event, and with just a single scratch ahead of her, she'll swim again Saturday night.
Two more B1GCats notched `B' cuts in the 100 free prelims, earning one scoring final berth and one bonus final lane. Sophomore Annika Winsnes (Singapore/United World College) lowered her previous career-best in the 100 free to 49.39 to qualify 13th overall while freshman Mary Warren (Hartland, Wis./Arrowhead) became the seventh Wildcat in program history to break the 50 second mark when she touched in 19th place with a career-best 49.96.
Northwestern picked up two more likely bonus final swims in the 200 breast with Saturday morning's action. Junior Julianne Kurke (Atlanta, Ga./Parkview) qualified 22nd overall with a 2:16.26 while Georgie Pettibone (Santa Rosa, Calif./Analy) slashed her career-best in the race down to a 2:16.83 to finished 25th, needing just one scratch to come back at night. Pettibone's swim moves her up to eighth on NU's all-time top times list in the event.
In the 200 butterfly, sophomore Ellen Stello (Shorewood, Wis./Shorewood) did not match her school-record swim from that AT&T U.S. Winter Nationals, but she did touch in a `B' cut time of 1:58.92 that qualified her 10th overall for the consolation final in the event.
Junior Emily Launer (DeKalb, Ill./Rosary) snatched the last bonus final lane in the 200 fly with a career-best 2:01.37 that lowered her previous college best in the event by 1.47 seconds.
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