The College of Staten Island swimming & diving celebrated their eight seniors tonight when they took on St. Joseph’s College – Brooklyn. Before the meet the Dolphins honored Jamilia Mambetalieva, Samantha Escobedo, Olivia Brown, Naomi Gaggi, Santonio Shand, Chris Pinto, Derek Villa and Tim Sweeney. The Dolphins put on a show for their home crowd one more time this season in a rout over the Bears. The women improved to 4-4 overall with a 117-72 win while the men remained perfect at home this season and improved to 5-1 overall with a lopsided 167-25 win.
The team of Alica Defonte, Escobedo, Victoria Crea and Ewa Wojciechowska got things started for the Dolphins by picking up a first place finish in the 200 yard medley relay with a time of 2:05.52, a whole six seconds before their opponents. Senior Gaggi would follow that up with a superb 1000 yard freestyle race, collecting a first place finish with a time of 12:25.23 to help increase her teams lead.
Reigning CUNYAC Diver of the Week once again placed first in the 1 meter and 3 meter diving portions of the meet helping keep the Bears at bay. Brown took part in the 100 yard breaststroke event tonight and place second to give her team a good finish of 1:35.62.
Villa kicked off his final home meet of his career with a first place finish in the 1000 yard freestyle much like fellow senior Gaggi did in her event. Sweeney came into tonight holding many pool records and nearly broke two of them tonight. The first one was the 200 yard freestyle where he came up just .6 shy of his own record with a time of 1:44.78. Sweeney would be able to break one of his pool records later in the meet in the 100 Fly event with a time of 51.73.
Pinto took to the pool in the 100 yard backstroke and took second behind fellow teammate Nicholas Defonte with a time of 1:03.84. The men and had a strong lead in tonight’s meet and were never in danger of surrendering the lead to the Bears.
The Dolphins will return to action on Saturday, January 14 where they will travel to Sarah Lawrence College for another non-conference dual meet at 11:00 am.
