Day One Results

CARBONDALE, Ill.—After a month off from competition, the University of Evansville men's swimming team opened the 2022 Mid-American Conference Swimming & Diving Championships in Carbondale, Illinois in style on Wednesday night, as the Purple Aces broke the school record in the 200-yard Medley Relay in the meet's first event.

The quartet of junior Riccardo Di Domenico (Johannesburg, South Africa), sophomore Alon Baer (Gesher Haziv, Israel) and freshmen Patrik Vilbergsson (Kopavogur, Iceland) and Daniel Santos Lopez (Madrid, Spain) clocked in with a time of 1:28.94 to beat the previous school record by over a full second.  Santos Lopez brought home the school-record with a blistering time of 19.70 in the 50-yard Freestyle leg of the Medley Relay.  UE's previous school record in the event was 1:30.05.

"What a great start to the meet!" said UE head swimming coach Stuart Wilson.  "Obviously, anytime that you can break a school record by over a full second, you have done a tremendous job.  But, I felt that the guys in the 800 Free Relay event also swam well as well.

"It was a great start to things tonight, but we still have a lot of work left to do this weekend.  We are only getting started."

Evansville also nearly took out the school record in the 800-yard Freestyle Relay to end the night, but fell just over four seconds shy of the record with a final time of 6:44.44.  It was still a drop of over 10 full seconds from the season's only other 800-yard Freestyle Relay time, set in the same pool back in November at the A3 Performance Invitational hosted by SIU.

The two relays were the only two events of the opening day of the MAC Championships.  The meet will continue Thursday morning at 10:30 a.m. with preliminary swims in the 50- and 500-yard Freestyle events and the 200-yard IM.  The finals of those three events and the 200-yard Freestyle Relay will highlight the evening portion of things on Thursday night, which will begin at 6:30 p.m.