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Feb. 18, 2004
2004 ACC Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships
CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA – The North Carolina Tar Heels lead after the first day of competition of the 2004 Atlantic Coast Conference Women’s Swimming and Diving Championship, being held at the Aquatics and Fitness Center on the campus of the University of Virginia. Both the 2004 ACC Men’s and Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships will be conducted over four days, with the 800-yard freestyle relay and 200-yard medley relay being swum on Wednesday evening.
The Tar Heels scored 74 points, leading Florida State which tallied 70 points. Maryland stands third with 66 points, while Virginia finished the evening in fourth (62 points). Rounding out the field are Duke (52), Clemson (50), Georgia Tech (50) and NC State (48).
The North Carolina 800-yard freestyle relay team of Virginia Hanson, Kelly Weeks, Amanda Smith and Jessi Perruquet started the meet with a bang, setting a new ACC, Championship and Virginia pool record with their time of 7:13.33.
In the final event of the evening, the 200-yard medley relay, Florida State’s foursome of Emily Breen, Lauren Brick, Rachel Dong and Emma Dutton took top honors, clocking a time of 1:40.84.
The Virginia women finished third in the 800 freestyle relay. The team of first-years Kimi Kelly (Mount Vernon, N.Y./Ursuline School), Katy Bland (Raleigh, N.C./Leesville), Rory Schmidt (Phoenix, Ariz./Arcadia), and third-year Laura Lipskis (St. Charles, Ill./St. Charles East) combined to swim a time of 7:18.91, which meets the NCAA “B” or consideration standard. It is the fastest time for the Virginia women in that event this year. The Cavalier women went on to finish fourth in the 200 medley relay, touching in at 1:41.60, which is also an NCAA “B” time and the fastest for Virginia this season. Second-year Brielle White (Philadelphia, Pa./Springside School) led off the relay with an impressive backstroke leg, touching in first in 24.95. First-year Jenny Steiner (Lawrenceville, N.J./Lawrence) swam breaststroke, third-year Cynthia Roller (Herndon, Va./Herndon) swam butterfly, and first-year Shannon Hogan (Northville, Mich./Northville) anchored the relay.
The Championship will resume Friday (February 19), with preliminaries beginning at 11:00 a.m. and finals commencing at 7:00 p.m.