NEW ROCHELLE, NY – With the entire Iona Campus buzzing with homecoming events, the Iona College men's and women's swimming and diving team didn't disappoint, grabbing three wins today the Hynes Athletics Center Pool.
The fifth annual Quad Invitational featured 11 new meet records as Iona squared off with St. Francis College, Sacred Heart University and Wagner in a unique 13-event, dual meet format.
The Iona men swamped the St. Francis men by a score of 165-58, setting eight meet records in the 13 events. The Iona women topped Sacred Heart, 166-71 and St. Francis 130-101; Wagner topped Iona 141-90.
Iona got out of the gate fast with a new meet mark in the 400-medley relay as
Spencer Moran (52.27);
Shane Syron (1:01.70);
Jalen Ramjohn (50.57) and
Conor Mullin (47.72) combined for a 3:32.26 clocking, which was .53 under the team's record set in 2018.
Co-captain and senior Matthew Anderson lowered the 2015 mark of 9:58.28 held by Saint Francis' Marcus Dasalvia with a 30-second victory over the field at 9:50.95. The 50-free saw
Aidan Holbrook break his brother's, Zack Holbrook, 2016-mark of 22.09, with a 21.97 clocking. The sophomore would later return to wipe out Christian Foti's 2015 mark of 48.21, with a 47.66 effort.
Senior co-captain
James Whaley, the school record holder in the 200-butterfly, posted a strong, early-season time and meet record of 1:56.49. That mark was .2 under the 2018 mark of teammate
Conor Mullin, who finished second in today's race.
The 200-backstroke saw Moran go 1:54.38, nearly three seconds better than classmate
Gabriel Finch's record of 1:57.07.
Sophomore
Daniel Hadary and Anderson battled stroke-for-stroke over the last eight lengths of the 20-length 500-freestyle, with Hadary winning by 1.8 seconds at 4:45.97, which was 3 seconds under Christian Foti's 2016 standard. The final men's mark came in the 200-breaststroke with sophomore
Jackson Madonia, lowering his own time from 2018 by two seconds to 2:11.00.
The women's meet records came from the Terrier's Mariajose Lopez (1000-freestyle at 10:30.50); Anna Montes Deco Zaoian (200-freestyle at 1:55.01 and 200-Butterfly at 2:08.85) and Wagner's Ellie Eastwood (2:23.96).
Junior
Kate Flynn was the Gaels only individual winner on the women's side, taking the 50 and 100-Free with respective times of 24.76 and 52.94.
A unique multi-class quartet of Iona women took the day's final event, the 400-Freestyle relay, with freshmen
Isabella Nicholson (54.11), sophomore
Katherine Lee (54.43), senior
Simone Sturrup (55.49) and junior
Willow Lopez-Silvers (54.27) anchoring the team to a 3:38.30 win, 1.5 seconds ahead of Wagner.
The Gaels travel to Bryant next Saturday for a 1:00 p.m. meet in Smithfield, Rhode Island.
