ATLANTA, Ga.- The Carson-Newman swim team will look to build upon their momentum from last weekend's action as they hit the road to compete in the Emory Invitational in Atlanta, Georgia on October 5 and 6.
The team, ranked 11th nationally on the men's side while the women are ranked 8th, is looking to continue growing as a program and building up speed after both sides took a clean sweep over the Milligan Buffaloes last Friday in Knoxville.
The last time the Eagles competed at the Emory Invitational was part of their 2019-20 season when the team finished third on both men's and women's side of competition. The Eagles finished behind both Emory University and Wingate, posting 429.5 points on the men's side while putting up 422 on the women's end.
Once in Atlanta, Carson-Newman will of course match up against host Emory University, an NCAA Division III program that won the DIII national championship in 2017 and placed as the national runner-up in 2018 and 2019. In the 2019 season, the Emory Eagles used five event national championships, 19 All-America honors and 17 All-America Honorable Mention certificates to edge out the Ladies of Kenyon College by nine points, the narrowest margin of victory in the 37-year history the NCAA Division III women's championships.
C-N will see Wingate yet again at this event as the two programs have seen Wingate win the last two dual-meet meetings including a 488-182 victory just two weekends ago.
In their last event of 2021, Carson-Newman took a 328-193 victory over Milligan as the event got moved to the Allan Jones Aquatic Center in Knoxville, Tenn. due to unfavorable pool conditions for the MSAC in Jefferson City.
Reigning Bluegrass Mountain Conference Female Swimmer of the Week, Kailee Morgan, continued her impressive outings for the women's breaststroke event as she won both the 100-yard and 200-yard events. In the 100-yard breaststroke, Morgan took the overall win with a time of 1:03.37. A couple events later, she added to her event wins as she took the 200-yard breaststroke in a time of 2:21.34. This is now the second straight event this season where Morgan has won the 100-yard breaststroke after she claimed the event during the Wingate meet.
"For us, it was about going out there and responding after the performance in the Wingate meet. We knew it was going to be a quick pool atmosphere at UT so we had to take advantage of it while we had the chance," Morgan said. "We swam pretty well and I know the team and coaches are mostly happy to get back on the winning side of action."
One shining athlete for the Eagles men's team was Nikita Puzevich who claimed the men's 50-yard freestyle while also being part of both winning relays for the team.
To start off his Friday of action, Puzevich joined forces with Thanos Diamanditis (Athens, Greece), Igor Dantas (Indaiatuba, Brazil), and Nicolas Lenuza (Spain) to take the men's 200-yard medley relay in a time of 1:32.79. Puzevich went on to win the men's 50-yard freestyle in a time of 20.48 to claim his sole individual win of the afternoon. Finally, it was Puzevich, Dantas, Lenuza, and Hobson Stelling (Memphis, Tenn.) finishing the event with a win in the men's 200-yard freestyle relay in a time of 1:23.50.
"So, we'll head to Atlanta this weekend before we're hoping to be back inside the MSAC against Lees-McRae which both events will allow for more preparation as we near the UT invitational in a couple weeks," senior Matthew George said. "It was good to be back out in the pool and as a team, we'll start tapering and preparing for what is coming up which starts with the Emory Invite."
The Eagles look ahead to getting into the water and continuing their fall slate of events as they head to the Peach State for the two-day event from the Jude Brown Aquatic Center.
Be sure to keep up with the C-N swim team all season long on all of Carson-Newman's social media platforms and at cneagles.com.
