Swimmers Take Eight More First Place Finishes On Day Two of 2012 Metropolitan Conference Championships

Piscataway, N.J.-Day two of the three-day 2012 Metropolitan Conference Swimming and Diving Championships being held in the Sonny Werblin Recreation Center on the campus of Rutgers University was another excellent showing in the pool for the University of Bridgeport men's and women's swimming teams, as the Purple Knights posted eight more first place event finishes to go along with the eight the teams recorded Friday night.  In the team scores after the day two of the 2012 Metropolitan Conference Championships, the UB men are in second place, with 813 points trailing only the College of New Jersey with 899, and the Bridgeport women are in fourth place with 639 points.  If the Purple Knights men's 200-yard Medley Relay Team was not disqualified due to a false start in the first event of the night, Bridgeport would have been only 14 points out of first place. There are a total of 21 teams competing in this year's Metropolitan Conference Championship. 

On the women's side, the Purple Knights won one individual event and one relay, and the UB men won five individual events and captured one relay.

For the Bridgeport women in individual events, sophomore Ilka Oberle (Schwanau, Germany) took first place in the 400-yard IM with a time of 4:35.50 (NCAA "B" Cut).  In that same event, team captain Maris Visse (SR, Tallinn, Estonia) turned in an NCAA "B" Cut time (4:37.69) taking third place.  Oberle also took third place in the 100-yard Breaststroke with a time of 1:06.30 (NCAA "B" Cut). 

Freshman Alina Sotnikova (Riga, Latvia) took second place in the women's 100-yard Back in a time of 57.69 (NCAA "B" Cut). 

In the women's 200-yard Free, freshman Alja Tavcar (Ljublijana, Slovenia) was third (1:55.03) and junior Anna Kwiatkowska  (Warsaw, Poland) took fourth place (1:55.43), both NCAA
"B" Cuts, and in the women's 100-yard Butterfly, freshman Mona Hagelstein (Hamburg, Germany) was fourth (57.31) (NCAA "B" Cut) and Kwiatkowska was fifth in a time of 58.98,

The women's 800-yard Free Relay Team of junior Anna Krasnowska (Kedzierzyn-Kozie, Poland),  sophomore Maria Trubitsyna (Moscow, Russia), Hagelstein and Visse destroyed the competiton taking first place by over eight second winning the event in a time of 7:39.63 (NCAA "B" Cut).  The women's 200-yard Free Relay Team of Sotnikova, Oberle, Visse and Krasnowska took second place in an NCAA "B" Cut time of 1:46.88.

Five different individual won events for the Bridgeport men on Saturday night.  In the 100-yard Backstroke, sophomore, team captain Oscar Pereiro (Arzua, Spain) broke his own meet record from last year turning in an NCAA "A" cut time of 48.05 to take first place.  The four other first place winners in individual events for the Purple Knight men on Saturday were in the 400-yard IM, freshman Igor Vulesevic (Zrenjanin, Serbia), 4:04.88 (NCAA "B" Cut and UB School Record), in the 100-yard Butterfly, junior Ilkka Hanhineva (Pietarsaari, Finland), 48:60 (NCAA "B" Cut), in the 200-yard Free, junior Krzysztof Wilk (Krakow, Poland), 1:40.55 (NCAA "B" Cut and UB School Record) and in the 100-yard Breaststroke, sophomore Ruben Gimenez (Burgos, Spain), 55.55 (NCAA "B" Cut).

Other top-notch performances turned in by the UB men on Saturday included freshman Vladislav Paskas (Zrenjanin, Serbia) taking second in the 200 Free (1:40.94, NCAA "B" Cut and also under old UB record); in the 100 Breast, junior Vyacheslav Fattakhov (Almatt, Kazakhstan) was second (57.03, NCAA "B" Cut) and sophomore Alejandro Roberto (Badajoz, Canary Islands, Spain) was fifth (58.04, NCAA "B" Cut).  In the 100 Back, freshman Matheus Lima (Santos, Brazil) was fifth in a time of 50.92 (NCAA "B" Cut). 

The UB men's 800-yard Free Relay Team of Gimenez, senior Davide Sitti (Castelnuovo Ramgone. Italy), Paskas and Wilk won the event in a time of 6:44.71 (NCAA "B" Cut, School and Conference Record).

The Bridgeport men closed out the evening with a 200-yard Medley Relay time trial where the quartet of Pereiro, Fattakhov, Hanhineva and Gimenez turned in an NCAA "B" Cut time of 1:30.58

Action at the 2012 Metropolitan Conference Championships concludes on Sunday evening.