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CSI MEN & WOMEN IMPRESS AT METROPOLITAN CHAMPIONSHIP
CUNYAC Rookie of the Year Swimmer Danila Novikov
The College of Staten Island men's and women's swimming and diving programs impressed at every turn this weekend, finalizing their team postseason competition with a strong showing at the Metropolitan Swimming & Diving Championships held at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey. The meet, which sees competition between all metropolitan area team spanning all NCAA divisions saw CSI place 8th on the men's side, their highest ranking ever, while the women placed 14th overall. The 40-event, three-day meet started on Friday and ended on Sunday. Preliminary rounds were held in the morning with Final heats drawn in the evening. CSI had a total of 66 entries in both men's and women's competition. On the men's side of the ledger, CSI got off to a nice start on Friday. In the morning preliminaries, CSI qualified for final heats in six of their eight entries. To start things off, CSI's Danila Novikov, Pavel Buyanov, Joe Lee, and Andrey Tarasov raced to a 1:28.77 finish in the 200-yard Freestyle Relay, placing them 10th overall and qualifying them for the final round in the evening in the B-division. There, they finished 10th overall again with a final race time of 1:29.29, less than a second ahead of both New Jersey Institute of Technology and Baruch College. In individual competition, Nikolay Shevchenko, Novikov, Tarasov, and Buyanov all qualified for the finals in the 200yard Individual Medley, setting up for a spirited evening race. In the A-Final heat, Novikov was the one to shine, pulling in a time of 1:52.84, making the NCAA B-cut time in the process, placing second overall and improving his own personal best mark by almost one full second. Placing behind him in fifth place was Tarasov, who flew in at 1:55.34, also shattering his own personal best time. In the B-Final heat, Shevchenko and Buyanov were neck and neck, with Shevchenko taking 11th overall with a time of 1:57.88 and Buyanov just a touch behind at 1:58.09. In the 400-yard Freesytle Relay, CSI finished fourth overall after scoring fifth in preliminaries, with a time of 3:32.14 in the A-Final heat featuring Tarasov, Buyanov, Shevchenko, and Novikov. Joe Lee and Paul O'Hara were participants in the 50-yard Freestyle as well in the evening, placing 36th, and 74th, respectively. Rounding out competition on Friday, CSI's Andy Gill scored a total of 248.55 points on the 1-meter board, placing 10th overall at preliminaries. On Saturday, the action continued for CSI. In the 200-yard Medley Relay CSI placed 8th in the preliminary round with Shevchenko, Novikov, Buyanov, and Lee racing in that order. They followed up the effort by placing fifth overall during the final heat with a time of 1:36.82, beating their own personal best time by almost three full seconds. Novikov followed up the effort in the very next event, the 400-yard Individual Medley. he placed third in the field at preliminaries, and then followed by besting his personal-best time by an unbelievable eight and a half seconds, racing