DAY 1 RESULTS / DAY 1 SCORES – After the opening day of competition in the 2016 CUNYAC Men’s and Women’s Swimming and Diving Championship, the College of Staten Island has a lot to cheer about.  The Dolphins broke a school record and two meet records after six events on each side, and collected a total of eight first-place finishes.  A third of the way through, The CSI men are leading by 18 points, while the women sit in second place, tailing Hunter College by 16.

Diving starts things off at the Championship held at Lehman College each year and that has long been a strength to the unit.  That held true today as CSI dominated the field.  On the women’s one-meter board, Caitlin McLoughlin narrowly defeated teammate Jessica Shaw for first place by less than one point, collecting 136.15 for first place.  In a heavily competitive men’s three-meter competition, it was freshman Adil El Haddad that took top honors, breaking a CUNYAC meet record in the process, scoring 233.8 points.  That was over 43 points better than Ayman El Haddad, who placed second.  Chris Pinto finished sixth in the event.

The opening day of competition also featured four relay events, the men’s and women’s 200-yard Freestyle Relay and the 400-yard Medley Relay.  CSI was exceptional in each, collected a total of three wins in the four races.  

In the women’s 200-yard Freestyle Relay, it was the team of Kelly Walsh, Naomi Gaggi, Samantha Escobedo and Ewa Wojciechowska flying in at 1:45.92, a little under two seconds faster than Hunter College for tops in the field.  In the men’s race, CSI doubled the effort with a 1:29.36 performance from Nicholas Defonte, Jonathan Gorinshteyn, Derek Villa and Tim Sweeney, as they were able to nip Lehman College’s team by 1.87 seconds.

In 400-yard competition, CSI grabbed another gold medal, as the same foursome raced to a 3:39.47 finish, good for a win by over five seconds in the race.  CSI’s women’s bunch of Walsh, Dakota Dawkins, Hunter Dawkins and McLoughlin, registered a sixth place finish.

With diving and relays out of the picture, individual events featured the 500-yard Freestyle, 200-yard Individual Medley, and the 50-yard Freestyle.  CSI proved more than capable in each, earning valuable points and stripping away some new records.  Naomi Gaggi was CSI’s top performer in the 500 Freestyle, grabbing fourth place, with Walsh taking sixth and McLoughlin 10th.  On the men’s side, Villa blew away the field with a time of 5:02.65, five seconds better than his seed time and good for an over eight-second win in the race.  Stephen O’Driscoll also earned a medal, collecting a bronze with a 5:13.87 finish.

After Dakota Dawkins helped CSI to an 8th-place finish in the 200 Individual Medley, it was the men’s turn in the water, and Tim Sweeney, the reigning CUNYAC Championship Meet MVP, was up to his old ways, posting a new CUNYAC Championship Meet record time of 1:55.43, winning the race by over four seconds.  Gorinshteyn finished fourth in the race as well.

The final event was the 50 Freestyle and this time it was sophomore Wojciechowska who cracked the record books.  Wojciechowska nipped John Jay’s Heather Chrisman by just nine one-hundredths of a second with a time of 25.22, a new CSI record and another first-place faring for the Dolphins.  Samantha Escobedo placed sixth for the Dolphins as well, coming in at 27.02.  The men made it a clean sweep of first place finishes on the day, when Defonte added a gold with a 22.56 race on the men’s side, beating Lehman’s Jeremy Guerra by just 0.41 seconds.  Youssef Aly finished 12th in the race as well.

With a bulk of competition left, the CSI men have collected 174 points, and sit ahead of Lehman with 156 and Baruch College at 132.  Brooklyn College follows at 104, while York trails with 44.  On the women’s side, Hunter has collected 148 points, with CSI a strong second with 132.  Lehman follows at 98 and Baruch is right behind them at 94.  Brooklyn then places fifth at 77 points with John Jay trailing them at 66, and finally York at 28.

The CUNYAC Championship continues tomorrow at 10am and concludes on Sunday at 10am.