ITHACA, N.Y. – After the first day of the 2024 Liberty League Championships, the Ithaca College women's swimming & diving program sit in first place after Wednesday's swimming competitions as they have totaled 296.5 points to lead the other nine Liberty League schools. They competed in the 500-yard freestyle, 200-yard IM, 50-yard freestyle and 200-yard medley relay, all within the Kelsey Partridge Bird Natatorium.
It was a great start to the four-day meet for Ithaca as in the first event the 500-yard freestyle, the Bombers were able to score team points with
Naomi Fry (5:11.83),
Kerry O'Brien (5:10.19),
Ava Palfreyman (5:11.92) and
Emma Heinze (5:12.82) each qualifying for the evening "A" finals with their respective times during the morning prelims. The top IC finisher proved to be
Ava Palfreyman who had an outstanding final 50-yards as she finished third with a time of 5:09.5. Just behind her in fourth place was
Naomi Fry who put together a time of 5:09.99 and
Emma Heinze (5:12.09) earned 23 team points with her seventh-place finish.
The Bombers had
Angela Merch competing in the "A" final of the 200-yard IM and she came up with a fifth-place finish and time of 2:10.12, which was faster than what she swam in the prelims. RPI's Shannon Brown paced the field and won with a time of 2:06.73. Ithaca had a both
Samantha Bender and
Spencer Carroll competing in the 50-yard freestyle, which saw RIT's Rose LaDue and Sam Russell tie for first place in the event with a recorded time of 24.08. Finishing in fourth was
Samantha Bender who swam a time of 24.17 and in sixth was
Spencer Carroll (24.26).
In the first relay race of the 2024 Liberty League Championships, RIT was able to score 64 total team points as they finished first in the 200-yard medley relay recording a time of 1:44.23, which was a LL Championship record time and NCAA B-cut. Ithaca's
Katie Champagne,
Spencer Carroll,
Kathleen Papiernik and
Samantha Bender were second combining for a time of 1:45.91.
Day two of competition continues tomorrow with swimming preliminaries at 10 a.m., diving preliminaries at 1 p.m. and finals for both at 6 p.m. The day will begin with the 200 freestyle relay, followed by the 400 IM, 100 butterfly, 200 freestyle and 400 medley relay. On the boards will be the women's 1-meter dive.
