Live Results
Photo Gallery
Lemley Interview
Lyons Interview
Preliminaries Recap
MANSFIELD, Texas – The Alaska Nanooks women's swim team completed an eventful week at the 2012 NCAA Division II Swimming and Diving Championships with two more All-America honors on Saturday night at the Mansfield ISD Natatorium.
“They finished strong,” head coach
Scott Lemley said following the national meet. “This is exactly why we train as much as we do. We don't get weaker over the course of four days of championship swimming, we get stronger.”
He continued, “I'm really pleased. Seven All-America swims and I thought we had the potential for a few more but this is a program record. We've never had seven All-America swims in one championship before.”
Alaska's 400 freestyle relay tandem of freshmen
Danielle Lyons (Prince Albert, Saskatchewan/St. Mary's),
Margot Adams (Anchorage, Alaska/Frontier Charter) and
Gabi Summers (Cheyenne, Wyo./Central) and sophomore
Bente Heller (Hamburg, Germany/Albrecht Thzer Gymnasium) won the consolation final with a new varsity-record time of three minutes, 27.38 seconds to finish ninth to earn Honorable Mention All-America status. That meant all three freestyle relays were All-America swims for the Nanooks.
The Nanooks had set the varsity record in this event during preliminaries, which they took 11th in 3:28.14. Lyons and Heller also swam personal bests in their respective 100 splits during finals as well.
Heller also became an Honorable Mention All-American in the 100 freestyle after she took 15th with a time of 51.51 in the consolation final. Her time was just down from her preliminary mark of 51.33, which qualified her 10th.
The Hamburg, Germany, native tallied a team-best six All-America awards for the week, which is already only two shy of the program's career individual record of eight, set by
Mariya Pavlovskaya (2008-11).
“Mariya is the only one who's been a three-time individual All-American twice and now Bente, her first shot, out is a three-time All-American in individual events,” Lemley said. “She's easily going to catch and surpass Mariya as our greatest swimmer ever.”
Earlier Saturday, Adams also competed with Heller in the 100 free preliminary and took 36th in 52.74 seconds, which was two-tenths of a second shy of her personal best.
The 'Nooks tallied 88 points as a team to place 16th out of 37 teams that scored during the week. Wayne State (497) won its first-ever national title, edging the four-time defending champions Drury (496) by a single point.
