Fort Lauderdale, FL – The Carson-Newman men's swim team currently sits in second-place after completing its five events in day one of the 2017 NSU Shark Invitational.
The team's first event of the day was the 200-yard freestyle relay, which brought a third-place finish. The squad of Nikola Tadic, Chad Andoljsek, Jonny Goss and Jon Lancaster completed the event in 1:24.16. The same group collected the top finish in the 400-yard freestyle relay last week against Limestone.
"Really pleased with the performance of the whole team today," Coach Jordan Taylor said. "Off a short week, they really stepped up and even the athletes were impressed with themselves."
Junior Marcelo Figueiredo earned third-place in the 500-yard freestyle with a time of 4:34.86, which is 17 seconds better than his time last weekend in Gaffney, S.C. for the same event. The finish marks the third-best time in the country in Division II.
In the 200-yard individual medley, the Eagles placed two athletes in the top-three out of a total of 44 swimmers. Junior Jon Lancaster finished runner-up to Rodrigo Codo Berti of the University of Indianapolis with a time of 1:53.47. Sophomore Caleb Howell, a native of Easley, S.C., followed Lancaster finishing at 1:53.65.
"We worked on some things with Jon over this past week and really impressed with what he did," Taylor added. "Caleb and Paden both swam some of their best times, I was really impressed with their performance but it's tough to single people out because everybody was fantastic."
Sophomore Paden Duke competed in the 500-yard freestyle with a season-best time of 4:50.70.
C-N had three swimmers finish in the top-10 times in the 50-yard freestyle with junior Seth Hughes leading the way with a time of 21.43 ultimately holding the 5th spot. Goss, tied another opponent for sixth-place finishing the swim in 21.44. The freshman Andoljsek came in with a time of 21.46 ultimately in the 8th due to the tie. 51 swimmers competed in the event.
The final event of the day collected a fourth-place finish by the Eagles in the 400-yard medley relay. The team of Hughes, Andrei Roman, Ivo Kunzle and Howell turned in a time of 3:26.50.
The standings currently have the Eagles with 191.5 points, ahead of South Atlantic Conference foe Wingate who holds the third spot with 176 points.
"Wingate is a rival we are trying to stay ahead of," Taylor mentioned. "We're trying to overtake them and they have a really good team. It's a good measuring stick to see where we are early on in the season."
The next session will take place tomorrow morning, Oct. 14 at 9:30 a.m., with the afternoon session to follow right after at 2:00 p.m.
You can view the full results from day one here.