Women’s Swimming Earns Team Bronze at ECAC Championships

EAST MEADOW, N.Y. -- The LIU Brooklyn women's swimming team earned the program's first-ever team medal with a third place finish at the 2018 ECAC Winter Championships, held at the Nassau County Aquatic Center in Long Island, N.Y. on Sunday. The Blackbirds won two individual silver medals and a relay gold medal on Sunday to bring the team's total record haul to 12 total medals (five gold, four silver, three bronze). Fairfield led the three-day meet from start to finish with 1825 points, followed by Wagner (1332.5) and LIU with 1271.5 points in the final tally to stand well ahead of fourth place St. Francis Brooklyn (813.5 points). On Sunday, both of the Blackbirds standout swimmers this weekend, earned a pair of silver medals in individual events with senior Briana Vega coming in as the runner-up in the 100 freestyle (51.54) and sophomore Amanda Peren taking second place in the 200 backstroke (2:00.18). In her race, Vega came out of Lane 1 to touch in just 0.15 behind the winner, but 0.35 ahead of last year's fifth-place pace. LIU freshman Lydia Amon (53.24) scored valuable points with a 10th place finish in race as well. It was Vega's second solo medal of the weekend, following her gold in the 50 freestyle, a day before. Including relays, she comes back to campus with six medals - four gold, one silver and one bronze, helping score 84 points for the team in the meet. In the first race of the morning, Peren picked up her third individual medal of the meet in the 200 back, moving up one spot from her bronze medal finish as a freshman. Her 200.18, was only 0.19 away from a win, but goes into the LIU record book as the new program standard, eclipsing the 2:00.67 she set in the same pool at the NECs last spring. Senior Nathalie Meyersswam a season-best 2:03.36 to come in third in the race, just ahead of sophomore Jeanne Touchette-McGowan (2:07.78) in seventh place. Peren was the weekend's overall points leader, amongst swimmers from 19 schools in attendance, collecting 111 points for her team, as she won a medal in all eight events she entered. Four golds in relays, three silvers (200 individual medley, 100 backstroke, 200 backstroke) and one bronze (100 butterfly). Senior Mads Carrigan, who earned the Blackbirds remaining individual medal on Saturday with a bronze in the 100 breaststroke, was the team's top finisher in the 200 breaststroke on Sunday with a sixth place showing (2:25.05). She also won two gold medals on relays at the meet. Junior Noemie Lacroix-Moreau slotted sixth in the 200 butterfly on Sunday to lead the team in that race, she also picked up her third gold medal in as many days as the Blackbirds closed out the meet with a win in the 400 freestyle relay, with Amon, Peren and Vega swimming the other three legs. Peren's 50.78 anchor leg gave LIU a victory by 0.83 seconds over Wagner in the race. "This is just a tremendous accomplishment for our team," said head coach Matt Donovan. "For the three seniors that built this program from scratch, to our one junior, our amazing sophomore class and our super six freshman - we now know what team success feels like and that can carry us a long way towards moving up the ladder at the NEC Championships here in February. We hope to come back next year and move up in this meet as well." Last year, in LIU's first appearance at the ECAC Winter Championships, the Blackbirds finished in fourth place with 640.50 points at the Nassau County Aquatic Center. This season the team nearly doubled their previous score, as they bring a team trophy from the 19-school event, back to campus on Mond