Kobelja Wins 200 IM; Spiders Extend Lead W/Relay Win

02/21/2014 | Women's Swimming & Diving

By: Richmond Athletics

The Richmond women's swimming and diving team stayed perfect in team relays with a win in the 200 Freestyle and posted a time just 11 hundredths shy of their own pool record to extend the team lead to 77 points after day two of the Atlantic 10 Conference Swimming and Diving Championships at the SPIRE Institute in Geneva Ohio Thursday.

The four-person team of seniors Mali Kobelja (Fort Wayne, Ind.) and Laura Jordan (Tampa, Fla.) and sophomores Natalya Ares (Potomac, Md.) and Kelley Yang (Elicott City, Md.), out touched George Mason by 16 hundredths of a second in a tight race to go 3-for-3 in team relays, which score double points for the team.

Earlier in the day, Kobelja won Richmond's first individual event of the meet, taking the 200 IM with her season-fastest time of 2:00.46, less than a second and a half from her own Conference Championship time that she set last year.

Erin Brady (Tyngsboro, Mass.) added seven points, while Meredith Gouger (Cockeysville, Md.) contributed five and Anna Fetter (Westfield, N.J.) scored one additional point for Richmond in this event, thanks to terrific qualifying times in the prelims earlier in the day.

In the shortest sprint event of the week, the 50 Freestyle, Yang posted the second-fastest time in the finals, just a tenth of a second behind the winner for a second-place medal and 17 important Spider points. Her time of 23.17 was a career-best for her in that event, the shortest distance of the meet.

Richmond also scored nine points from Ares and 4.5 points from Jordan's run in the consolation heat.

In the first finals event of the day on the women's side, Emma Terwilliger (Niskayna, N.Y.) posted 12 points for Richmond with a seventh-place finish in the 500 Freestyle, and Molly McSweeney (Stoneham, Mass.) turned in 11 more points for an eighth-place finish, with Allison Titley (Richmond, Va. / Saint Gertrude), Jessie Krebs (Towson, Md.) and Mariel Kush scoring for the Spiders.

The 1m diving finals were held on Thursday, and Richmond posted a pair of scoring results. Freshman Irina Chiulli (Westwood, Mass.) scored 220.65 in the finals, which was good enough for sixth place and 13 Richmond points, while junior Katherine Cook (Kenilworth, Ill.) scored enough to add six points in this event. Earlier in the day, freshman Mikaela Gekas-Robinson (Woodbury, N.J.) earned two points for her total in the preliminary round, giving Richmond three divers scoring in an event in more than a decade.

The Spiders have 236.5 points after day two, withy Massachusetts in second with 159 and Fordham third at 156. Five more individual events will be completed on Friday, with the 400 Yard Medley Team Relay set to cap off the day's events.

The event concludes Saturday night, when five more individual swimming events, the 3m diving finals and the 400 Free Team Relay will finish off the meet.