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CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. – The Virginia women’s swimming team qualified 11 student-athletes for the 2011 NCAA Championships, set for March 17-19 in Austin, Texas.

Katya Bachrouche, Meredith Cavalier, Claire Crippen, Hannah Davis, Kelly Flynn, Emily Lloyd, Kristen Moores, Anne Summer Myers, Rachel Naurath, Lauren Perdue and Liz Shaw have each been selected to participate in the NCAA Championships.

“We are really excited to have 11 women qualify for this meet; never has it been this fast,” Virginia head coach Mark Bernardino said. “It is a great honor for any student-athlete to be able to compete in this meet and to qualify this year, with the standards as difficult as they are, we feel very fortunate.”

For the third consecutive year, all five Virginia relays also qualified for the national meet.

“It’s also exciting that all five of our relays are going to have an opportunity to compete,” Bernardino continued. “We feel we’ll make some personnel changes on a couple of the relays to make them a little bit faster than they were at ACCs – and we’re confident they can be.”

Six seniors – Bachrouche, Crippen, Davis, Moores, Myers and Shaw – will compete for the final time in a Virginia cap at the NCAA Championships. The class of 2011 made history last month at the ACC Championships, earning its fourth conference crown. Crippen, Davis and Shaw will be participating in the national meet for the fourth consecutive year.

Meanwhile, Lloyd and Naurath – two freshmen – will make their NCAA Championships debut.

Crippen and Perdue both automatically qualified for the national meet with NCAA ‘A’ times at the conference championships.

Crippen set an ACC record with a victory in the 400 individual medley at the league meet and also broke her own school record with a NCAA ‘A’ time of 4:07.29. Perdue also posted an ‘A’ time, breaking her own conference record mark with a time of 1:43.73 in the 200 freestyle. That time is the third-fastest in the country to date.

It marks the fourth consecutive year Virginia has qualified at least 10 athletes into the meet. The Cavaliers were represented by 10 swimmers in 2008 (finished 20th); 12 in 2009 (finished 12th) and a school-record 16 swimmers in 2010 (finished ninth).

“We are looking forward to being there and competing with the best in the world,” Bernardino said. “We will put our best foot forward in representing the University of Virginia. A major point of emphasis for this team has been to compete at a high level at the NCAA Championships. The time to come and we want to be competitive.”

The highest finish in school history for UVa was a seventh-place showing in 1988.

2011 Women’s NCAA Qualifiers

Virginia Relays
200 Medley Relay
400 Medley Relay
200 Free Relay
400 Free Relay
800 Free Relay

Katya Bachrouche, Senior
500 Free
1650 Free
400 IM

Meredith Cavalier, Sophomore
100 Back
200 Back

Claire Crippen, Senior
200 IM
400 IM
200 Fly

Kelly Flynn, Junior
50 Free
100 Breast
200 Breast

Hannah Davis, Senior
50 Free
100 Free
200 Free

Emily Lloyd, Freshman
50 Free
100 Free

Rachel Naurath, Freshman
500 Free
1650 Free
200 Fly

Kristen Moores, Senior
50 Free
100 Free
200 Free

Anne Summer Myers, Senior
500 Free
1650 Free
400 IM

Lauren Perdue, Sophomore
50 Free
100 Free
200 Free

Liz Shaw, Senior
200 IM
400 IM
200 Fly

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