Men set three records on first day of action at UAA Championships

Daniel Wohl '21 (photo by Sportspix.com / Jan Volk)
Daniel Wohl '21 (photo by Sportspix.com / Jan Volk)
Posted: Feb 14, 2019

CHICAGO, Ill. – On the first day of action at the 2019 University Athletic Association championships, the Brandeis University Swimming and Diving team set four school records and sent a pair of swimmers to the evening's final sessions.

INDIVIDUAL SCHOOL RECORD

  • The day's first school record came in the first individual race of the day for the men. Sophomore Daniel Wohl (Chapel Hill, N.C./East Chapel Hill) knocked two seconds of the 500-yard freestyle mark that had stood since 2015 with a time of 4:39.30 in the preliminaries.
  • It represented a five-second improvement from Wohl's best time of the season previously and put him into the 'C' Final as the 19th overall seed.
  • Wohl then lowered his record once again in the finals by another two-and-a-half seconds to 4:36.85 in the finals, placing third in his heat and 19th overall.

OTHER FINALIST

  • Also reaching the evening session was junior Tamir Zitelny (Syosset, N.Y./Syosset) in the 50-yard freestyle.
  • In the prelims, Zitelny posted the 11th fastest time with a mark of 21.19 seconds, 0.15 off the school record that has stood since 2004. 
  • In the finals, he finished in 12th place overall, swimming 21.21 seconds.

RELAY RECORDS

  • During the evening's four relays, the Judges set three school records, two for the men, one for the women.
  • The men set the first record of the session in the 200-yard freestyle relay, with the team of Wohl, sophomore Marcelo Ohno-Machado (San Diego, Calif./Torrey Pines), sophomore Chase Chen (Villanova, Pa./The Hill School) and Zitelny shaving 0.07 off their own record set earlier this year with a time of 1:25.03, good for seventh place overall.
  • The women set their record in their final race of the day, the 400-yard medley relay, with a team of rookies swimming 4:01.50, good for eighth place. Claire Xu (East Hanover, N.J./Newark Academy), Olivia Stebbins (Willington, Conn. / Edwin O. Smith), Gazelle Umbay (North Hills, Calif. / Sierra Canyon School) and Lauren Howard (Abington, Mass. / Cardinal Spellman) erased the oldest relay records on the books for the women by three-quarters of a second. The mark had stood since 2009.
  • The men followed suit with their best finish of the meet, placing sixth in the 400 medley relay with a time of 3:27.52, topping Case Western Reserve by just under a second for sixth. This squad was made up of Zitelny, rookie Brendan Lu (Basking Ridge, N.J. / Ridge), junior Matthew Arcemont (Santa Ana, Calif./Mater Dei) and Wohl and took down a record set at last year's UAAs. 

OTHER TOP INDIVIDUAL PERFORMANCES

  • The top individual finisher for the women was rookie Claire Xu, who placed 28th in the 200-yard individual medley with a time of 2:14.10. She missed the finals by about two seconds.
  • Junior Matt Arcemont placed 30th in the men's 200 IM with a time of 1:57.30, which represents the second-fastest time in school history.
  • Rookie Lauren Howard (Abington, Mass./Cardinal Spellman) was 44th in the women's 50 free with a time of 25.22 seconds, just ahead of junior Uajda Musaka (Winthrop, Mass./Winthrop), who swam 25.28.
  • Senior Kylie Herman (Weston, Fla./Cypress Bay) was 34th in the 500 free for the women with a time of 5:21.37, while rookie Abby Etzweiler (Malvern, Pa./Great Valley) cracked the all-time top 10 in the event with a time of 5:27.10, good for 39th overall and 10 in program history.

TEAM SCORING

  • The Judges sit in eighth place with 159 points on the men's side, 132 on the women's. For the men, it represent's a two-point improvement over 2017-18 after Day Two of the UAAs, which started on Wednesday with diving.