- Results
| David Kraft placed second in the 1000 free after finishing third in the 500 free last night to finish out a strong meet at the Purdue Duals over the weekend. |
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind.; November 11, 2006 - The Penn State men??s swimming and diving team wrapped up its competition at the Purdue Duals on Saturday and several individuals turned in more strong performances as the Nittany Lions finished the meet with a 2-2 record in its four dual meets. The Nittany Lions, who led three of their four duals after the first night of competition, defeated Utah 223-130 and also topped Louisville 264-87.
Penn State also fell to Purdue 202-151 and to Georgia 234-119. The second day of the meet was highlighted by three third place finishes for the Nittany Lions as well as four of the top five finishers in the 1000 freestyle.
The best performance of the second day came in the 1000 freestyle for Penn State as Nittany Lion swimmers placed second through fifth. David Kraft (Vienna, Va.), after finishing third in the 500 free last night, placed second in the 1000 with a time of 9:21.59. Dito Calderon (Bowie, Md.), who finished fourth in the 500, was just behind Kraft in third in 9:29.20 while Ben Ryan (State College, Pa.) came in just over a second behind Calderon in 9:30.56. Chris Sullivan (Naples, Fla.), after placing fifth in the 500, rounded out the Nittany Lion quartet in the 1000 with another fifth place finish, touching the wall in 9:30.76. Ryan DeWeese (Midlothian, Va.) also finished eighth in the 1000 free, giving Penn State five of the top eight finishers in the top distance event of the meet.
After getting four second place finishes on Friday night, Penn State picked up three third place finishes in addition to the success of the five individuals in the 1000 free. After placing second in both the 400 medley and 200 free relays last night, Penn State began the swimming part of day two with a third place finish in the 200 medley relay by the team of Pat Schirk (Pottstown, Pa.), Kyle Miranda (Louisville, Colo.), Tim Williams (North Bend, Ohio) and Sean Swanepoel (Lincoln Mead, So. Africa), which finished in 1:33.28.
Schirk failed to win his fourth straight backstroke event but still turned in a good performance, placing third in the 100 backstroke in :50.45 a night after winning the 200 back and two weekends after captured first in both the 100 and 200 back at the Virginia quad meet.
Two Nittany Lions also finished fourth in their respective races as Miranda, who had placed third in all of his previous individual breaststroke events so far this year, finished fourth in the 2:06.54. In the 200 freestyle, Sean Biedermann (Colorado Springs, Colo.) placed fourth in 1:41.38. Penn State??s next-best finish on Saturday after that was Dan Kaiserian (Radnor, Pa.), who finished fifth in the 50 free in :21.13. Kaiserian had three second place finishes on Friday night.
Mike Alderman (Arlington, Va.) wrapped up another strong performance as he placed third in the one-meter springboard diving with 317.05 points after he placed fifth in the three-meter last night. On the women??s side, Kimberlee Peifer (Camp Hill, Pa.) finished fifth and Courtney Adlam (Ambler, Pa.) placed sixth in the three-meter as the Penn State women??s diving team also competed in the meet.
The men??s and women??s team will join back together in two weekends for a three-day meet at the Bell Grand Prix in Toronto, Ontario on Thanksgiving weekend.