ITHACA, N.Y. – It was another outstanding day of competition inside the Kelsey Partridge Bird Natatorium on Thursday as Ithaca College remain atop the leaderboard after the second day of the 2025 Liberty League Swimming & Diving Championships. The Bombers have now amassed 801 team points as sitting in second is RPI (719), third are the RIT Tigers (554), Skidmore College is in fourth with 364 and rounding out the top-five is Clarkson University (318).
 
Ithaca started the evening finals session off strong with first year Claire Weppler taking first place in the 400-yd IM with a time of 4:33:78. She got off to really solid start out of the starting blocks and led from start to finish winning the event by nearly six seconds over Vassar's Anna Little (4:42.88). The Bombers would also score valuable team points with junior Caroline Armistead finishing seventh with her time of 4:47.02.
 
IC continued to dominate as next up, in the 100-yard butterfly Kathleen Papiernik defended her title in the event and not only broke the championship record placing first with a time of 55.70, but the time also surpassed an NCAA B-cut. First year Elizabeth Bodie ended up taking third with her time of 56.73.  
 
Next up was the 14^th event of the LL Championship was the 200-yard freestyle. RPI senior Shannon Brown put together an outstanding performance winning at 1:52.69. The top IC finisher was junior Naomi Fry who touched the final wall in 1:54.34.
 
Returning National Champion Kailee Payne would wow the crowd with what turned out to be another record-setting performance. The senior went into her 11^th dive on the 1-meter boards with a nearly identical total as second-place finisher Angela Burke (490.65) and produced a clean dive that put her finals score at 554.65, which reset her championship record and also ranks third in all of Division III this season. Payne does have the top mark from an 11-dive total from earlier in the season. Also finishing on the podium for the Bombers was fellow senior Jenell Slesser (465.60) who was fourth as well as Eliza Salus (428.70) who finished in eighth.
 
In the final event of the evening, RPI took home first place in the 200-yard freestyle relay with a time of 1:34.24, which was an NCAA B-cut. Ithaca's top relay squad of Elke Beaumont, Emma Kidd, Sierra Houck and Spencer Carroll finished just two seconds behind to take second place with their time of 1:36.53.
 
Complete results from Thursday can be found here. Day three of the 2025 Liberty League Swimming & Diving Championships continues tomorrow with swimming preliminaries once again 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-yard medley relay, followed by the 200-yard butterfly, 100-yard backstroke, 100-yard breaststroke and will conclude with the 800-yard freestyle relay. The men's 1-meter dives will also take place.