GRANVILLE, Ohio - The Wittenberg men's and women's swimming and diving teams put the finishing touches on the 2014 North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) championship meet with a seventh-place finish for the men and a fifth-place finish for the women.
Wittenberg's women came tantalizingly close to a top-four finish as the Tigers totaled 882 points to end up 12 off the pace of fourth-place Wooster. Denison won the event for a sixth straight year with 1,839 points, followed by Kenyon with 1,805 and DePauw with 1,087. Denison, Kenyon and DePauw all rank in the top 15 nationally.
On the men's side, Denison again picked up a sixth straight team title, this time with 1,898.5 points. Kenyon was next with 1,851. The Tigers placed seventh with 596 points after coming up on the short of a three-way battle for fifth place with Oberlin and Ohio Wesleyan.
The top individual finish was supplied once again by senior Molly Gustafson (West Hartford, Conn./Conard), who continued to bolster her case for a third trip to the NCAA Division III Championship meet with an NCAA B Cut time in the 200-yard breaststroke. She placed fifth in the event with a time of 2:23.88.
Gustafson was joined in the "A" final race of the 200-yard breaststroke by senior Claire Kozlowski (Dublin, Ohio/Jerome). She finished ninth in a personal-best time of 2:26.52.
That finish was matched by senior Sarah Wilson (Centennial, Colo./Arapahoe) in the 200-yard backstroke, while sophomore Dani Lacy (Louisville, Ky./Louisville Collegiate School) took 13th place in the 100-yard freestyle and sophomore Margaret White (Westfield, Ind./Westfield) contributed a 10th-place finish in the 1,650-yard freestyle.
Rounding out the day's top women's finishes for the Tigers were freshmen Emily Allen (Camp Hill, Pa./Cedar Cliff), who picked up eighth place in the 1-meter diving event, and Kate Gustafson (West Hartford, Conn./Conard), who took 13th.
The top men's finishes on the day were provided by sophomore Stephen Stuthers (Pittsburgh, Pa./Central Catholic) in 14th place in the 200-yard backstroke and junior James Dumstorf (Louisville, Ky./St. Xavier) in 10th place in the 200-yard breaststroke. Dumstorf improved his time more than two seconds en route to a victory in the "B" final in the event, in the process lowering his NCAA B Cut time.