By: Jake Renie, Assistant Athletic Director for Communications
CAMPBELLSVILLE, Ky. – The Centre men's and women's swimming & diving programs jumped back in the pool on Friday night, kicking off the 2022-23 season with a dual meet south of Danville against the Campbellsville Tigers. The meet was swum in short-course meters in contrast to the usual short-course yards that they compete it, but it didn't matter as the Colonels won on final scores of 142-57 for the men and 159-42 for the women.
The women's team had several student-athletes that tied for the team-high in points from the meet, including freshman
Katelynn Stanczyk,
Caroline Lee,
Olivia Headley,
Natalie Cox, sophomore
Callie West, junior
Greer Manger and senior
Audrey Becker. The Colonels kicked off the meet with an eight-second win on the 200 medley relay, the squad of Lee, Cox, West and Stanczyk finishing on a 2:08.20 time.
Centre would showcase a vast amount of depth with a first-through-third set of finishes in three different events, including the women's 50 free. Headley would post the event's best time with a :28.58 final time, followed by
Claire Pellegrin (:29.37) and
McKenzie Tucker (:29.54). The Colonels would also post a one-two-three result in one of their signature relays, the women's 400 free relay. The winning time of 4:15.83 would beat out the other lanes by almost six seconds, consisting of the team of
Samantha Coffey,
Abby Jacobs, Stanczyk and Manger. Manger would split the Gold and White home with a 1:01.14 split as the anchor leg.
Dustin Niebauer would be the high-point man for the Colonels on the men's side, winning all four of his races on Friday night. The freshman native from Marion, Va., would split as the backstroke leg in the men's 200 medley relay, teaming up with
Jackson Fears (breast),
Carter Dilger (fly) and
Kai Oddo (free) for a final 1:49.88 time. The medley relay mentioned prior would beat out the second-place relay by over four and a half seconds.
Wyatt Fulton would post an impressive finish in the men's 100 free to kick off his freshman campaign at Centre, slamming down a winning time of :55.33 in the race. The Lithia, Fla., native was the only student-athlete in the race to have a final-50 split of under 30 seconds.
Ben Wafford would find his way to an individual win with a 1:11.37 final time in the men's 100 breast, out-splitting the second-place finisher by over two seconds within the race's first 50 meters.
"I'm really proud of you all." expressed head coach
Dean Brownley to the team after the meet, "It was a really good first meet of the year; all the little things that we talked about we hit on tonight."
The Colonels will look to continue their strong start to the season with a pair of meets next weekend, both the men and the women going out east to take on Washington & Lee on Friday, Oct. 7 and West Virginia Tech on Saturday, Oct. 8. The first meet of the weekend is scheduled to start at 6 p.m. ET out in Lexington, Va.
