Cedar Rapids, IA – The Scarlet Hawks finished their season with impressive swims on Saturday evening as the women finished in sixth place overall at the 2015 Liberal Arts Conference Championships. Eleven total teams competed at the meet, and the Scarlet Hawks moved up in the standings throughout the weekend. The sixth place finish marks Illinois Tech's highest finish on the women's side since 2012 when the team also finished sixth. Defending champions, Luther College won the meet with a total of 892.5 points.
In the final session of the four-day meet, Ava Obenaus led off the scoring with a 16th place finish in the 1650 Freestyle with a season-best and lifetime-best time of 20:05.25. Freshmen Madeline Burrell and Haley Slator then added to the Scarlet Hawks' impressive final day with 11th place and 14th place finishes respectively in the 200 Backstroke. Burrell finished in 2:18.49 and Slator with a final time of 2:21.29.
Grace Wischmeyer swam to a 10th place finish in the 200 Breaststroke with a season-best and lifetime-best time of 2:37.25. Teammate Brigitte Temple swam a season-best and lifetime-best time of 2:27.90 in the preliminary session on Saturday morning, and took the bronze in the 200 Breaststroke, finishing third overall with a final time of 2:29.17 at finals. Briana Tyler also took third in the 200 Butterfly as she finished the race strong with a season-best and lifetime-best time of 2:18.83.
The women then closed the meet out with a great 400 Freestyle relay that placed eighth in the field of eleven. Temple, Wischmeyer, Burrell and Tyler finished the race with a final time of 3:52.85, 10 seconds faster than their seed time.
The Scarlet Hawks enter the off-season with some tremendous momentum. Senior Maria Behrens is the only graduating member of the team. Behrens finished her season with a career meet, dropping significant time in all three of her individual events. She swam the 50 Freestyle in 29.29 (previous best 30.90), the 200 Freestyle in 2:24.42 (previous best 2:34.03) and the 100 Freestyle in 1:04.69 (previous best 1:08.08). The team will return seven freshmen swimmers, and two sophomore divers. All nine returning Scarlet Hawks scored at the 2015 championship meet.
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