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2015 Big Ten Championships Campus Recreation and Wellness Center Iowa City, Iowa NU's Place: 6th/10 Wednesday Results |
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IOWA CITY, Iowa -- Northwestern had a tremendous start to the 2015 Big Ten Championships Wednesday at Iowa's Campus Recreation and Wellness Center, getting two relay performances that were near the top of the Wildcats' record book to currently sit in sixth place in the field.
Northwestern kicked off the meet with the third-best 200 medley relay performance in school history, swimming an NCAA `B' cut of 1:25.93 to finish in fifth place in the conference. The team of Andy Jovanovic (Chicago, Ill./Loyola Academy), Uula Auren (Helsinki, Finland/Mäkelänrinteen Lukio), Mark Ferguson (Perth, Australia/John XXIII) and Almog Olshtein (Haifa, Israel/Haifa) put together a strong all-around performance to move up NU's all-time list past the Wildcats' 2005 relay that included Northwestern Hall of Famers Matt Grevers, Mike Alexandrov and Kyle Bubolz.
Interestingly, Northwestern's previous top 200 medley relay of this season came with the same four swimmers at November's TYR Invitational, but with Ferguson swimming the backstroke leg and Jovanovic on the fly. They flip-flopped and time dropped.
In the second and final event of Wednesday's brief program, Northwestern's all freshmen and sophomore 800 free relay swam the second-fastest time in that event in school history. The team of Charlie Cole (Bernardsville, N.J./Bernards), Alex Snarski (Libertyville, Ill./Libertyville), Gage Kohner (Boca Raton, Fla./Boca Raton Community) and Jonathan Lieberman (Eden Prairie, Minn./Eden Prairie) touched in 6:26.76 to win the first heat and end up sixth overall among the Big Ten field.
The time was just 0.59 of a second short of the school record in the race. Cole's leadoff split of 1:35.91 was an NCAA `B' provisional qualifying time in the 200 free and a career-best by 1.48 seconds. It also places him third all-time at Northwestern in the 200 freestyle.
The first full day of competition at the 2015 Big Ten Championships starts tomorrow, Thursday, Feb. 26, with preliminary heats at 11 a.m. CT, diving prelims at 1 p.m. CT and finals at 6:30 p.m. CT.
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