CHICAGO—The Illinois Institute of Technology men's swimming & diving team returned after over a month away from competition on Saturday when they hosted North Central College (Ill.) at the Ekco Pool. The Scarlet Hawks registered a 166-26 victory over the Cardinals, and improved to 6-2 in dual meets this season.
"Our team raced very well coming off a week of intense training in Florida," said IIT head men's and women's swimming coach Andy Parro. "Plenty of season-best performances and aggressive racing will keep the momentum going into the final stretch of the season. Now it's time to do what we do best and go back to work in the classroom on Monday!"
The 100 yard butterfly was all Tyler Van Wagener, who claimed first place with a 53.20, while Mitchell Lucky followed him in second place with a 55.50. Kanoa Sawai tallied first place in the 100 yard freestyle with a 49.91, followed by teammate Arturo Villegas's second-place time of 55.73. The Scarlet Hawks swept the 100 yard backstroke podium courtesy of Matthew Randle (57.04), Seth Wissenbach (59.47) and Miles Thompson (1:02.82). Another sweep occured for IIT in the 400 yard individual medley thanks to Wissenbach (4:25.11), Escasa (4:29.20) and Klinchin (4:30.53).
The 500 yard freestyle saw Eric Zhang register first place with a 5:07.23 while Guanghao Ou tallied second place with a 5:09.71. The 100 yard breaststroke saw a clean IIT sweep thanks to Samuel Kalenowski (1:02.54), Lucky (1:04.16) and Mark Klinchin (1:07.41).
RJ Schroeders, Ryan Escasa, Matthew Randle and Samuel Kastan teamed up for a first-place time of 1:33.86 in the 200 yard freestyle relay. The 200 yard medley relay saw Kastan, Ou, Sawai and Zhang claim first place with a 1:40.65.
Thompson (10:23.95) and Franklin Zheng (11:02.92) were the lone two competitors in the 1000 yard freestyle. The Scarlet Hawks swept another event when they dominated the 50 yard freestyle behind Kastan (22.61), Sawai (22.88) and Van Wagener (23.05).
IIT will return to action on Saturday, January 18 when they host Carroll (Wis.) in a dual that will begin at 1:00 p.m.