Drury Men make it Five in a Row

Wayne State came into the fourth day of the NCAA Division II Championships with a 36.5-point lead over Drury University. However, the Panthers outscored the Warriors, 175-100.  The final day gave the Drury men their fifth consecutive NCAA Division II Championship, but you'll have to excuse head coach Bryan Reynolds if he gets a little emotional. "This is as good as it gets, particularly with the way we did it." And the way they did it was by coming back after some early stumbles to capture the closest Division II Championship since Cal State Bakersfield edged North Dakota in 2002.

Both of those teams have since moved onto Division II, but Drury, along with a number of upstart programs helped produce twelve meet records and one of the most exciting meets in the history of the meet.

Drury had a great last day breaking two meet records and coming from behind to win there fifth national championship in a row.  Wayne State swam and dove an outstanding meet to earn second place and Missouri S&T  worked their way up the ranking s through the meet to earn their second third place finish in a row.

Men's Top Ten
1 Drury University 543 2 Wayne State 504.5 3 Missouri S&T 320.5 4 Limestone 279.5 5 Ouachita Baptist 259		6 Wingate 230 7 UC San Diego 221.5 8 Tampa 199 9 Grand Valley 191 10 West Chester 172

Male Diver of the Meet: Nathan Jimerson, Saint Cloud
Male Diving Coach of the Meet: Tracy Torgerson, Saint Cloud State
Male Swimmer of the Meet: Mitch Snyder, Drury
Male Swim Coach of the Meet: Sean Peters, Wayne State

1650 Freestyle: The men’s mile once again started out as a five man race.  At the 500 Drury’s Mitch Snyder held a slim lead going 4:36.13 at the 500, 1.1 seconds ahead of the fifth place swimmer .  Over the next 500 yards Snyder and Fernando Costa  of Wayne State pulled away with Tampa’s O’Linger getting hot on Costa’s heels.  Snyder continued to pull away from the field and O’Linger  went along as best he could moving past Costa.  Snyder finished the 1650 with a blistering 25.04 last 50 to break the meet record in 15:00.51.  O’Linger finished a strong second going 15:09.90, Costa raced in to third at 15:16.56 followed by Kyrill Fesenko of Drury finishing in a time of 15:18.43.

100 Freestyle: Records continue to fall as senior Dan Perdew of UC San Diego left his mark with meet record time of 43.30.  Perdew and Limestone’s Craig Jordens hit the 50 and 75 turns together and in front.  Perdew nailed his last turn and held his stroke to the finish.  Drury’s Huang Yiwen surged home on the last 25 to out touch Jordens by .02 seconds going 43.52.  Wingate junior Norman Mason put his hand on the .01 seconds ahead of Ouachita Baptist sprinter Radu Badalac going 43.88 for fourth.  After this event Drury managed to go up 19 points over Wayne State and Limestone took a two point lead over Missouri S&T 231 to 229 for third and fourth.

200 Backstroke: Another meet record falls and both the top two finishers eclipse the record time.  This was a great race as Minnesota State-Mankato’s senior Marty Wahl and Wayne State senior Sean Smith battled it out.  Marty took the race out in 50.7 with Smith behind at 51.5.  This became a two man race as Smith pulled even at the 150.  Wahl and Smith went stroke for stroke into the 175, but Smith got in and off the wall with a great under water kick out to take the lead and hold on for the win at 1:44.89.  Wahl finished close in 1:45.38.  Drury’s Alexander Protsenko was third at 1:47.07.  Wayne State pulled within 2.5 points of Drury with 2 events to go.

200 Breaststroke: This event had the most drama of the meet.  First place finisher Zlatan Hamzic or Missouri S&T may have won, 1:58.08, but his peeking at the score board may have cost him a meet record as he missed it by .29 seconds.  He looked easy going out 57.35 and split 29.78 on the third 50 to pull away from the field and win by almost 3 seconds.  Runner up Jesse Lawrence didn’t even score in the 100 breaststroke where he finished 18^th in a time of 57.46.  But last nights champ Aleksander Hetland’s stroke sent of alarms in Jesse’s head and as Coach Brian Reynolds puts it, “Everything we had worked on that he didn’t get through the year became obvious.”  So Jesse ends up top seed after prelims dropping 9 seconds from his seed time and going his best 100 time in route to his 2:00.26 prelim swim.  Tonight Jesse swam tough and pulled out a second place finish going 2:00.85.  Now the third place finisher had a lot on his mind.  Incarnate Word sophomore Blake McKay swam a great race closing in at the end and finishing third at 2:01.27.  Blake’s performance was not over after the race.  He hopped out and in between huffs and puffs asked his girlfriend Bethany Ellison to marry him right on the bulkhead.  He came out a winner with a yes and a hug and a kiss  from Bethany and a lot of cheering from the crowd.  Congratulations! 

Drury has a foothold on the lead with 503, Wayne State, 474.5; Missouri S&T has secured third with 296.5 and Limestone, Ouachita Baptist and UCSD are battling for the 4^th through 6^th spots with 245.5, 231 and 221.5.

400 Freestyle Relay: Great finish to a great meet. All Drury needs to do is avoid a DQ . . . not a forgone conclusion considering the nature of the meet, but the Panthers take the title with an incredible come from behind anchor leg of 43.13 by Huang Yiwen to win in a record time of 2:56.63.  Limestone made a great finish and clocked a 2:57.10 for second and Wingate, which led most of the way finished in third going 2:57.22

Tinal Team Scores 1 Drury University 543 2 Wayne State 504.5 3 Missouri S&T 320.5 4 Limestone 279.5 5 Ouachita Baptist 259 6 Wingate 230 7 UC San Diego 221.5 8 Tampa 199 9 Grand Valley 191 10 West Chester 172 11 Incarnate Word 159 12 Minnesota State 124.5 13 Clarion 112.5 14 Saint Cloud St 102.5 15 Indianapolis 94.5 16 Delta State 88 17 Henderson State 71 18 Ashland 67 19 Southern CT State 62 20 Truman State 52 21 Saint Rose 27 22 Lewis University 22 23 Le Moyne College 16 24 Indiana U 12 25 Catawba 11 26 Rollins College 10 27 Bentley College 4 28 Adelphi 1

Photo Courtesy Drury Sports Information