The College of Staten Island men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams were on display today at Florida International University in their Sprint Invitational in Miami, Florida. The competition featured swimmers from all three NCAA Divisions, and in the end, the CSI topped out in fifth place among the seven competing schools while the women came in sixth among eight teams.
Despite the final standings there was plenty to be proud off at the race. CSI senior and highly decorated swimmer Timothy Sweeney was a big point-getter, and won the 50-yard Butterfly with a time of 23.73, beating out American University’s Matthew Callander by just nine-one-hundredths of a second. Sweeney did not stop there, he added a gold medal performance in the 50-yard Backstroke with a time of 24.90, beating out Kaiser University’s Nick Oh by 0.15.
Sweeney would also add a second place finish in the 100-yard Butterfly with a time of 52.31, adding to a third place finish he had in the 100-yard Backstroke competition earlier in the meet. There were also several other notable performances by both the men and the women in the meet.
On the men’s side, Derek Villa scored a 12th-place finish in the 100-yard Freestyle event and scored a sixth place finish in the 400-yard Freestyle with a time of 4:03.37. On the women’s end, senior Naomi Gaggi was equally impressive in the 400-yard Freestyle, blasting her seed time by almost a full minute and pulling in a time of 4:54.06 to earn 9th place.
When it came to diving, the Dolphins continued to earn points. On the one-meter boards, Adil El Haddad came in third among six divers with a score of 143.0 and on the three-meter platform, Jude Nicholson took the bronze with 149.8 points. Nouran Abualam took eighth place on both boards to represent CSI.
Florida International won the meet outright on the women’s side, followed by SUNY-Binghamton and American University. In the men’s division, Binghamton took top honors, with Keiser University posting second place and Adelphi University taking third.