The Illinois State swimming and diving team completed their first day of competition at the Missouri Valley Conference Championships in third place following second place Southwest Missouri State and first place Southern Illinois.
Kyle Pullman, Valerie Zaleski, Brittany Armstrong and Monique Witkowski started the meet off right by coming in second place in the 200-yard freestyle event that led the relay team to a second place finish at 1:36.63. A seventh place finish for Redbird teammate Jenny Klicka helped to secure points for the Birds in the 500-yard freestyle event (5:07.85).
A personal best time was recorded for Simone Leger in the 200-yard IM (215.17). Her teammates Brittany Byrd (2:14.30) and Katie Finan (2:08.61) in the preliminaries also produced personal best times. Helping to keep the Birds afloat were Pullman (24.32) and Witkowski (24.58) who placed fourth and fifth consecutively in the 50-yard freestyle. Teammate Zaleski was not far behind placing seventh at 24.89.
Another solid swimmer during the preliminaries was Emily Richardson who had a personal best time in the 500-yard freestyle at 5:12.71.
Head swimming and diving coach
Steve Paska believes that the team will only get stronger as the weekend moves on.
The team started to get better as the night went along, said Paska. We had a lot of jitters that we worked out and the next two days are going to be our strongest against our competitors.
On the diving side, for the third consecutive season at the championships, Krystal Featherston won the one-meter diving event with a score of 236.80. Following close behind Featherston was Terra Whisman in fifth place (218.80), Emily Hirt in seventh (215.95), and Allison Kouba in eighth at 2:07.75.
Head diving coach Carly Weiden is proud of the divers and the way they handled the pressure.
The athletes had a lot of pressure on them tonight, said Weiden. Every diver came into the pool today and did what they had to do. We had nine divers score points for the team, you cant ask for much more than that.
The Redbirds will be back in the pool tomorrow to compete in twelve more individual events.
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NOTE: For information regarding the full results of the Missouri Valley Conference Championships, please visit the Southern Saluki website at: http://siusalukis.collegesports.com/sports/c-swim/spec-rel/021505aab.html
