ORLANDO – Day one of the Sunshine State Conference Women's Swimming Championships saw Florida Southern take two of the top four spots in the 1,000-freestyle, strong performances from freshmen Jacinda Whittenburg and Britt Aubley, and a consolation finals victory from one of its 200-medley relay teams. Those results helped the Moccasins hold down third place, only 3.5 points behind second-place Tampa. Nova Southeastern has a 32-point lead at the top.
In the 1,000-freestyle, both Tampa's Britt Bayes and Florida Southern senior Alli Crenshaw (Marietta, Ga.) broke the previous meet record, but Bayes won the gold medal by finishing 4.01 seconds ahead of Crenshaw with a time of 10:04.90. The Moccasins, however, still scored the most points in that race by having junior Heather Burns (Lake City, Fla.) finish fourth and sophomore Elizabeth Fris (Holland, Mich.) finish eighth. Tampa's next two swimmers after Bayes were 10th and 12th, but the Moccasins got additional points from sophomore Madi Rowan (Matthews, N.C.) who placed 13th out of the 26 swimmers competing and knocked more than seven seconds off her season's best time.
Though Lynn's Rebecca Matthews set a meet record in the 200-IM, Florida Southern had two of its swimmers finish ahead of Tampa's top performer, with sophomore Cassie Ley (Hilton Head, S.C.) fifth and junior Morgan Burns (Hilton, N.Y.) sixth, just 0.56 seconds apart. The Moccasins also got a win in the consolation finals from Whittenburg (Lakewood, Colo.), while sophomore Kourtney Gavin (Jacksonville, Fla.) was fourth in the same race.
Florida Southern's only swimmer in the championship finals of the 50-freestyle was junior Kelsey Gouge (Snellville, Ga.), who had her best time of the season at 23.41 seconds. That was good for fourth place in the third straight race on Thursday in which a conference championship record was set. This one came from Nova Southeastern's Bryndis Hansen in 22.68 seconds. Aubley (Jacksonville, Fla.) and junior Lauren Reynolds (South Elgin, Ill.) qualified for the consolation finals where they were third and eighth respectively. Aubley's time of 23.09 seconds made her eligible for the NCAA Championships by reaching the NCAA "B" standard.
In the final event of the night, Florida Southern's top 200-medley relay team of Reynolds, Gouge, sophomore Alex Ballard (Kingfisher, Okla.) and Ley finish fifth, and it's #2 team of sophomore Lily Rose (Rockley, Barbados), Morgan Burns, Gavin and Aubley win the "B" finals. The first relay race of the meet saw yet another championship standard set, meaning all four of Thursday's events went into the SSC record book.
Day two of the championships is Friday with prelims beginning at 10 a.m., and the finals in three individual events and two relay events beginning at 6 p.m.
