ITHACA, N.Y. – The Ithaca College men's swimming & diving program had another strong day of competition as part of the 2024 Liberty League Championships on Thursday with several outstanding performances turned in. The Bombers saw first-place finishes in both the 200-yard freestyle relay as well as the evenings final event, the 400-yard medley relay. Overall, Ithaca sit in second totaling 702.5 as in first through two days is RIT (726) and in third is RPI (588.5) and in fourth are the Skidmore College Thoroughbreds (383).
The 200-yard freestyle relay showed off its speed right off the bat with their preliminary time of 1:24.19 earning them the top seed going into the evening finals. The foursome of
Michael Paulos,
James Collishaw,
Matthew Mitros and
Alec Kutsner teamed up to produce a speedy time of 1:20.85, which surpassed an NCAA B-cut.
Ithaca had a pair of top-8 finishers in the 400-yard IM, which was won by Skidmore's Ryan Delfico who produced a finals time of 4:02.83. Finishing in third place for the Bombers was
Matthew Janssen who recorded a time of 4:05.42 and coming home in eighth was first year
Marshall Adams who produced a time of 4:15.57.
Matthew Mitros had a speedy closing 25-yards during the 100-yard butterfly but it wasn't enough as RIT's Drew Scheib just beat him out finishing with a time of 48.36, compared to Mitro's 48.97. The final individual event on Thursday also proved to be ultra-competitive as RPI's Michael Dowd paced the field in the 200-yard freestyle with an NCAA B-cut time of 1:39.41 as finishing in second place for the Bombers was
Ryan Cooke who swam a time of 1:41.06.
Ithaca's 400-yard medley relay team of
Alec Kutsner,
Michael Paulos,
Matthew Mitros and
James Collishaw dominated the field and won the event for the third year in a row with a combined time of 3:18.79, which was also an NCAA B-cut as they finished ahead of RIT's relay squad (3:19.94).
The Liberty League championships continue tomorrow with the 200-yard butterfly, 100-yard backstroke, 100-yard breaststroke, men's 1-meter diving and the 800-yard freestyle relay. Swimming preliminaries begin at 10 a.m., followed by diving preliminaries at 1 p.m. and finals for both at 6 p.m.
