Bulls Finish Final Day of MAC Champs in Sixth Place

Buffalo finishes the meet with ten new records, four of them set tonight

BOWLING GREEN, OH- The University at Buffalo women’s swimming and diving team wrapped up the MAC Championships at Bowling Green’s Cooper Pool on Saturday night, finishing in sixth place overall. In the final day the Bulls set four more school records, making their total ten school records throughout the weekend.

Jessica Ballard

Buffalo’s 400 freestyle relay of Jessie Koltz, Sam Palma, Jordan Deren and Jessica Ballard broke the school record set last season with a time of 3:25.02, giving the Bulls a clean sweep of record-breaking relays for the weekend. Ballard also broke the school record in the 200 backstroke, dropping a second off her preliminary time, finishing in 1:59.66 to finish fourth overall. Rachel Sorg had a lifetime-best swim in the preliminary event, and swam to an eighth-place finish in a time of 2:02.64 at finals. Breaststroke specialist Brynn Marecki swam to a school record 2:16.94 in prelims and came back even faster to claim sixth place with a time of 2:15.99 at finals. Deren broke the school record in the 1650 freestyle (16:46.06), bettering the old time set in 2000 by more than three seconds. Palma represented Buffalo in the 100 freestyle finishing with a career-best 51.38 at prelims, and finishing 12th at finals.

Brynn Marecki

In diving, Meili Carpenter placed second on the three-meter board with a score of 282.65, while Ursula Jeske took 16th with a score of 180.30.

The Bulls ended the meet in sixth place with 335 points. Miami was the 2009 MAC Champion with 639.5 points, followed by Ohio (611.5 ), Toledo ( 568.5), Eastern Michigan ( 497.5) and Akron (347). Bowling Green (305.5) and Ball State (200.5) finished behind Buffalo in seventh and eighth respectively.