Quartet owns all five school relay records as women's swimming takes 13th at ECACs

Quartet owns all five school relay records as women's swimming takes 13th at ECACs

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Rookie Angela Chui (Toms River, N.J./Peddie School) was part of six school-record performances, and she, along with juniors Hollis Viray (Glastonbury, Conn./Glastonbury) and Siobhan Lyons (Leominster, Mass./Notre Dame Acad.) and rookie Julia Derk (Greeley, Colo./Greeley West), owns all five school relay records as the Brandeis University women's swimming and diving team finished in 13th place out of 26 teams, tops among Division III schools, at the 2009 ECAC All-Division championships at Harvard University.

The Judges' first school record of the meet came in the finals of the very first event, the 200-yard freestyle relay. Chui, Viray, Lyons and Derk took the fourth of the five Brandeis relay records. They lowered a six-year-old mark by 0.08 with a time of 1:41.60 in the finals, finishing in 10th place after posting the 11th-best time of qualifying.

Chui also lowered her own individual school mark in the 200-yard individual medley. She had the ninth-fastest time in the prelims, just missing a spot in the championship finals by eight-hundredths of a second with a record time of 2:09.79. In the finals, she won the 'B' final and improved her mark again by more than four-tenths of a second to 2:09.38, also bettering her NCAA 'B' Qualifying time.

The last record set was another relay, as the quartet of Chui, Viray, Lyons and Derk lowered their own mark in the 400 medley relay by five full seconds. They broke the record once in the prelims with a time of 4:05.26 and improved by three more seconds in the finals, winning the 'B' final in 4:02.25.

Also scoring for the Judges on Day One was sophomore diver Dana Simms (Rockville, Md./Walter Johnson), who was 11th in the three-meter event with a score of 152.20.

The Judges slipped three spots in the standings on the second day of action, losing out on key relay points after getting disqualified in the 200 free relay. Despite that setback, Chui had the women's highest individual placement at the meet, finishing seventh overall in the 400-yard individual medley. Her time of 4:33.24 in the prelims was the fourth-best and lowered her school record and NCAA Division III Championship ‘B' qualifying time by more than a second, and she posted a time of 4:35.04 in the finals. Viray added points in the 100 breaststroke, where she finished in 11th place with a lifetime best time of 1:06.95 in the finals.

On the final day of action, the Judges ended up with three more school records, two in individual events and one in a relay, giving the quartet of Derk, Viray, Lyons and Chui all five relay marks. They finished 11th in the prelims of the 400-yard freestyle relay with a time of 3:41.28, taking a full half second off the last relay record set in 2005 to give them the full set.

On the individual side, junior Hollis Viray set her first individual record of the meet in the 200-yard breaststroke with a time of 2:26.76 in the prelims, taking down a mark established by Maya Marx '03 in 2003. Viray's time was an NCAA ‘B' qualifying time, though on the lower end of the scale with relation to her being selected. After just missing the championship finals by 0.21 seconds, she placed 13th in the consolation finals with a mark of 2:27.28.

Chui lowered her own record, her fifth of the meet, in the 200-yard backstroke with a time of 2:08.05 in the prelims, finishing 14th and also improving her NCAA championship time in the event by 0.18 seconds. Though she was half a second slower in the consolation finals, Chui improved her standing by one place to finish 13th.