ELKHART, Ind. — Day two of the NAIA Swimming & Diving Championships in Elkhart, Ind. saw the Buffaloes men and women take part in a quartet of events, posting three new Milligan records, a national runner-up, two individual All-Americans, an All-American relay team and a national title-winning relay squad in the process.
The events that were completed on Thursday included the 500 Yard Freestyle, the 200 Yard Individual Medley, the 50 Yard Freestyle and the 200 Yard Freestyle Relay. Preliminaries of the individual events happened in the morning session and the finals took place in the evening. The relay did not have a preliminary session.
Milligan's Riley Renaud started things off with a bang after qualifying fifth for the final in the women's 500 Yard Freestyle, notching a 5:05.08 time to come in fourth place nationally as an NAIA All-American.
Robert Adam in the men's 200 Yard Individual Medley came in as the national runner-up with a 1:48.09 mark as the top individual finisher for the men to this point in the championships. His time was a new Milligan program-best clip.
Milligan sent three men's swimmers, Caleb Fry, Joash Mckonie and Paxton Smith, into the 50 Yard Freestyle competition B-Final. Fry posted the sixth-fastest time of any swimmer in either the B-Final or the A-Final with a 20.08, which is a new Milligan record.
Next up was the women's 200 Yard Freestyle Relay, as Madison Akbari, Mary Grace Bitting, Teagan Jose and Samantha van Vuure teamed up to post a 1:37.05 which placed them seventh as an All-American relay squad.
On the men's side, a shocking turn of events helped propel the 200 Yard Freestyle Relay squad to the program's first ever relay national title. With false starts and early take offs from three teams, including the top finisher Keiser, the Buffs group of Smith, Fry, Mckonie and Stephen Gilbert reached a time of 1:19.82, which is the new Milligan best. That effort would have been second place, but instead put them atop the podium.
Events continue on Friday morning, as preliminaries for the 400 Yard Individual Medley, 100 Yard Butterfly, 200 Yard Freestyle, 100 Yard Breaststroke and 100 Yard Backstroke begin at 9 a.m. ET. Those events will have their finals during the evening session, which begins at 5 p.m. ET.
