JEFFERSON CITY, Tenn. – The Carson-Newman Eagles men's and women's swimming teams defeated the Milligan Buffaloes men's and women's swimming teams with wins in men's action of 166-36 and on the women's side 159-37 at the Maddox Swimming Pool on Tuesday night.
The win marks the first in school history for Carson-Newman, undergoing its inaugural season, and the Eagles collected victories in all 22 events in front of a capacity crowd at Mossy Creek.
"My team has worked hard for the past 11 weeks to put this together," said head swimming coach Paige McCord. "I'm really proud of what we were able to do in the water and also out of the water tonight with our sportsmanship."
Carson-Newman opened the event with victories in the men's and women's 400-yard medley relays, with the Eagles winning the women's event with a time of 4:04.91 and the men beating Milligan with a time of 3:41.05.
The Eagles proceeded to win the next 20 events en route to a sweep of Milligan, and McCord was proud of how Carson-Newman achieved the goal of winning each race.
"We knew ahead of time where some of our strengths would be," said McCord. "So that was a team goal – to come out and make a dominant presence and make ourselves known a little bit in the area."
Leading the way for the Carson-Newman men's team was junior Stephen Parsons (Auburn, Ala.). He collected individual victories in the men's 50-yard freestyle race with a time of 21.34 and then won the men's 100-yard backstroke with a time of 52.20.
"Really excited for the team this week," said Parsons. "We knew we had some competition tonight but we came in and swept everything, it was a good atmosphere for us."
"Stephen is showing some good qualities of a young man that's figuring some things out," McCord said. "Several other key people in that category were some of our distance swimmers and even some of our second-tier distance swimmers that didn't know they were distance swimmers before tonight. They stepped up and had some best times like I was forecasting."
Parsons had a counterpart on the women's side for Carson-Newman in freshman Natalie Burnett (Sevierville, Tenn.). Burnett earned wins in the women's 50-yard freestyle with a time of 23.84 and also the women's 100 yard butterfly with a time of 57.55.
"I felt like I was swimming really fast," Burnett said. "I can't wait for conference meets to do something big there."
"Her (Burnett) strong swim tonight was the 50 free, going ahead and getting a 'B' qualifying time which is what we need to get to nationals to start that track," McCord said. "That was the first of more to come for her and many others to come along the way."
Carson-Newman will next swim at the Fall Frenzy event from Nov. 22-23.
