BALTIMORE, MD - In the team's best performance of the season to date, the Iona University men's and women's swimming and diving team came away from the 2022 Loyola University H2Ounds Invitational with a women's second place finish and a men's third place finish.

Final Results

The host Loyola University Greyhounds took the top spot in both team races. The Loyola women accumulated 1,188-points in the 40-event meet, with the Iona second at 839; Howard University placed third at 824; Virginia Military Institute was fourth at 410, with the diving contingents of Mt. St. Mary's and Catholic University tied for fifth at 39-points. The Men's team race saw the hosts total 1230.5-points, Howard was second at 890.5; Iona third at 652; VMI was fourth at 561 and Catholic divers, fifth at 45.

THE RUNDOWN

Individually on the women's side, freshmen, Victoria Novinskiy claimed two golds and set two Iona school records taking meet titles in the 100-yard Backstroke and the 200-Backstroke at 56.96 and 2:01.45. The 100-yard time lowered her own record set earlier in the season and the 200-yard time was 1.73 better than teammate Meghan Pattison's record set in 2019. The New Hampshire native also took silver in the 200-Individual Medley breaking the 2016 record of Maryellen Mangione with a 2:05.91 time, .25 under the old record.
 
On the men's side Junior Michael Faughnan broke the men's longest standing record in the 100-Freestyle, clocking 45.26 for fourth place. The race was .16 better than the 2009 season in the full body suit era time held by Seth Tasman '09. The Hopewell Junction, NY native also broke the 2019 team record of Matthew Bosse, in the 200-Backstroke of 1:48.88 with a time trial clocking of 1:47.21. Faughnan also took gold in the 500-Free at 4:33.49 and silver in the 1,650-Free at 16:01.39.
 
Other gold medals came from senior Isabella Nicholson, who won the 100 and 200-Freestyle events with respective times of 51.69 and 1:52.35. Senior Tristan Urso won the women's 400-Individual Medley race with a career best effort of 4:33.62.
 
The Iona women's quartet of Megan Josephs (1:55.69); Novinskiy (1:53.85), Elisa Vaher (1:58.45) and Nicholson (1:51.61) combined for gold in the 800-Free Relay at 7:39.70.
 
Other Iona women taking individual medals included: Luiza Da Silveira, who took bronze in the 200-Back at 2:06.06; Julia Moser, who claimed bronze in the 100-Breast at 1:04.57; Katherine Sarnes was third in the 1650-Free at 17:51.49; Urso took a silver and bronze in the 1650-Free at 17:44.35 and 500-Free at 5:08.15, respectively.

Coach's Comments

"We really competed well in Baltimore," noted Coach Nick Cavataro. " Our group has big goals for this year and we have made a lot of progress, but they all know the MAAC has quality and depth in every event and we will have to keep moving ahead every day."

Up Next

Iona returns to training to prepare for the February 8-11, 2022 Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference Championship in Buffalo as well as January dual meets with rivals Fairfield (Jan. 21); Fordham (Jan. 25) and Manhattan (Jan. 28).

SOCIAL MEDIA