NEW HAVEN, Conn. - Sophomore Lindsay McNall (Colchester, Vt./Colchester) won the 100-yard backstroke as one of two Saint Michael's College men's and women's swimming & diving all-conference qualifiers on Saturday, and four program records fell during day three of the four-day Northeast-10 Conference Championship at Southern Connecticut State University's Hutchison Natatorium. The Purple Knight men are sixth among seven schools with 182 points, trailing Adelphi University by 14, while the women moved into seventh out of nine with 138 points. The final day kicks off on Sunday with trials at 10 a.m.
McNall set two school records on Saturday, including as she won the 100 back in 57.66. She lowered her year-old school record of 58.86 after also eclipsing the mark in trials, which she entered as the third seed in the event. The runner up in the 200 back race as a first-year, she and Eileen Mullowney '12 remain the only two female swimmers in school history to earn NE-10 All-Conference laurels, which requires finishing among the top two in an event. On Saturday, McNall also took fifth in the 100-yard butterfly in a school-record 59.41, lowering her two-week-old mark of 1:01.03. She also surpassed that time during the preliminary round.
Junior Julie Shea (Peabody, Mass./Peabody Veterans Memorial/Assumption) entered the 100-yard breaststroke as the 12th seed but claimed a seventh-place finish in 1:08.53, besting Julie Mullowney's '14 two-year-old program standard (1:08.65). McNall, Shea, senior Kim Brady (Morris Township, N.J./Academy of Saint Elizabeth) and sophomore Katrina Wiesner (Bow, N.H./Bow) sided to take seventh in the 200-yard freestyle relay in 1:41.50, coming within 0.78 seconds of a three-year-old school record.
Two Purple Knights narrowly missed qualifying for consolation races. First-year Sammy Sidorakis (Baldwinsville, N.Y./C.W. Baker) was 17th in the 100 back trials at 1:04.87, coming within 0.02 seconds of the final qualifier for the consolation race. In the 400-yard individual medley, senior Olivia Hamilton (Bourne, Mass./Bishop Stang) cut 15.53 seconds off of her seed time to touch the wall in 5:24.09, taking 17th but missing the consolation race by 3.05 seconds.
First-year Pierce Farrington (Shelburne, Vt./Champlain Valley Union) finished second in the 100 fly in 50.68 to claim his first NE-10 All-Conference laurel. Farrington is the first male swimmer in school history to land an all-league accolade, and he joins diver Max O'Brien '13 as the program's lone male NE-10 All-Conference honorees. During the morning's trials, Farrington clocked in with the event's top time of 50.55, breaking his own three-month-old school record by 1.72 seconds and besting an eight-year-old NE-10 mark by 0.05 ticks. His trials time was 0.22 seconds shy of an NCAA Championship "B" cut. Farrington continued to hold the league record until a conference counterpart bettered the time in finals.
Farrington later joined senior Nathan Paluso (Windham, Maine/Windham) and sophomores Ryan Butler (Waltham, Mass./Waltham) and Cam Thirkell (Tyngsboro, Mass./Tyngsboro) to take sixth in the 200 free relay at 1:31.89. Paluso was 13th in the 100 breast at 1:03.32, and junior Chad Phalon (Wantage, N.J./Pope John XXIII Regional) was 14th in the 400 IM at 5:00.60, finishing the day 28.07 seconds faster than his seed time.
