DAVIE – For the fourth day in a row, Alli Crenshaw brought home a gold medal for the Moccasins, and for the second year in a row, she pulled off a 4-event sweep at the Shark Invitational. The junior All-American won the 1,650-freestyle Sunday night before junior Lauren Reynolds won her second backstroke race of the meet, which enabled Florida Southern to finish second by a single point overall in the 6-team meet hosted by Nova Southeastern.
Crenshaw (Marietta, Ga.) earned another NCAA automatic qualifying time by winning the 1,650 in 16:44.78, almost 18 seconds faster than Tampa's Brit Bayes. That shattered the previous meet record she established last year. Crenshaw had already won the 200, 500, and 1000, setting meet records in each of those events as well. Her automatic qualifying time for the NCAA Division II Finals was her third of the meet, along with the 500 and 1,000-freestyles.
The Moccasins also had the third and fifth-place swimmers in the 1650 on Sunday, with junior Heather Burns (Lake City, Fla.) and sophomore Elizabeth Fris (Holland, Mich.) each surpassing the NCAA "B" standard. That allowed the Mocs to widen what had been a 2-point margin over Nova Southeastern in the team standings, and proved crucial in the final 1-point margin.
Reynolds (South Elgin, Ill.), who won the 100-backstroke on Saturday, was the leader of a group of four Moccasins who made it to the A finals of the 200-backstroke where she defeated Nova Southeastern's Emma Wahlstrom by 1.92 seconds with an NCAA "B" qualifying time of 1:59.89. It was the first time she broke the 2-minute mark this season and she narrowly missed the best time of her career.
The Mocs picked up additional points in the 200-backstroke too when freshman Peyton Breault (Jacksonville, Fla.) finished fifth, sophomore Lily Rose (Rockley, Barbados) finished seventh, and sophomore Alex Ballard (Kingfisher, Okla.) was 10th.
Junior Kelsey Gouge (Snellville, Ga.) nearly gave Florida Southern a third winner on Sunday when she finished as the runner-up in the 100-freestyle, which fell between the 1650 and the 200-backstroke. Though she finished behind Nova's Bryndis Hansen, Gouge still achieved an NCAA provisional time at 51.35 seconds, and sophomore Cassie Ley (Hilton Head, S.C.) did the same by placing fourth at 51.59 seconds. Another Moccasin sophomore, Riley McClendon (Mansfield, Texas) missed a provisional time by one-tenth of a second while winning the B final of the 100-freestyle.
The last individual race of the meet was the 200-breaststroke where the Mocs were led by junior Morgan Burns (Hilton, N.Y.) and freshman Jacinda Whittenburg (Lakewood, Colo.). They finished fourth and fifth respectively, just one-tenth of a second apart with their best times of the season. Sophomore Kourtney Gavin (Jacksonville, Fla.) gave the Mocs a third swimmers in the A finals, and placed eighth.
The Shark Invitational concluded with the 400-freestyle relay, where the Mocs' top team of Crenshaw, Gouge, Ley, and Ballard placed third with an NCAA "B" time of 3:27.71. The Moccasins' second team in that event, comprised of McClendon, Breault, Reynolds, and freshman Allie Kaufmann (Denville, N.J.), was in fourth place with another "B" time, and beat the top teams from three of the other six schools competing.
That gave Florida Southern 1,322½ points in the meet, just one more than third-place Nova Southeastern. Tampa won the Shark Invitational with 1,651½.
Florida Southern will now break for Christmas before returning to competition on Saturday, January 3, when it hosts Wingate at 1 p.m.
