University of Richmond Athletics
University of Richmond
Atlantic 10 Championships
Richmond Wins Three Golds In Day Three At A-10s
02/21/2015 | Women's Swimming & Diving
Sophomore Irina Chiulli (Westwood, Massachusetts) won Richmond's first gold in diving since joining the A-10 in 2001 by taking the women's 3m springboard with a school-record score of 314.60 as the Spiders cut the gap to just two points for the lead after day three of the Atlantic 10 Swimming and Diving Championships at the SPIRE Institute Friday.
There are just one more day and seven more events remaining in the Championship, which conclude Saturday night in Geneva, Ohio. Richmond trailed by 27 points entering the day after trailing by 38 the day before as Spider swimmers moved up from their seeds entering the events of the day.
“Kelley (Yang) said it best on the bus last night when she said, 'We can think about everybody else and try to beat everybody else, but we need to make sure we think about ourselves not beat ourselves.' And my message to them last night on the bus was that the only people we need to care about right now are on this bus,” said Richmond head coach Matt Barany. “We told them to move up from their seed and that's what we did today. We had opportunities and the swimmers and divers took advantage of those opportunities.”
Junior Kelley Yang (Ellicott City, Maryland) won her second medal of the week and Richmond's first of the night when she broke her own A-10 Championship meet record with a career-best time of 53.65 to win gold. The Spiders took the lead in the meet at that point.
In the very next event, the 200 Free, freshman Annie Lane won her first individual A-10 medal when she took second in the event that marked the halfway point of the meet. Her time of 1:49.39 earned her a silver medal.
Lane followed that 10 minutes later with her first individual gold of the A-10 meet with a time of 1:02.61 in the 100 Breast to push the UR lead out to 35 points. Lane was one of three freshmen to win a gold medal, the first won by freshmen in individual events at the meet this week.
Championships leader Massachusetts placed five divers in the 3m final to retake the lead, but the Spiders closed the gap back to two points after taking the silver in the 400 IM relay to conclude the night. The foursome of Yang, Lane, Maggie Pope (Nashville, Tennessee) and Natalya Ares (Potomac, Maryland) took home Richmond's second silver in the relays. The Spiders have claimed medals (one gold, two silvers and a bronze) in all four relays contested to this point.
Before the last relay, the women's 3m diving finals were contested. Chiulli was fourth after the preliminary round.
“I was excited to see Irina move up in finals and get the win,” said head diving coach Sean Letsinger. “Going into the finals, I talked to her about blocking out everything in the room and to be aggressive on the starts and I was happy to see her do that. UMass is a tough diving team to face. I knew if she could hit her backs and reverses, she would make them work and that's what she did.”
Freshman Hannah Verrette (Marblehead, Massachusetts) landed a fourth-place finish in the first final of the night, the 400 IM. Pope also finished fourth, in the 100 Back, where the top four finishers were separated by just 0.12 seconds.
The preliminary rounds will be contested Saturday morning, starting at 10 a.m. The finals will take place starting at 6:30 p.m.
Players Mentioned
