Teams: Women's Swimming & Diving: Press Releases

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

SWETT, KONO, O'NEILL GARNER ALL-NESCAC HONORS IN SWIMMING & DIVING

Maureen O'Neill

Kendall Swett

Megan Kono

MEDFORD -- With their top finishes at the 2008 New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC) championship meet last weekend (Feb. 22-24) at Wesleyan University, senior diver Kendall Swett (Akron, OH) and first-year swimmers Megan Kono (LaGrange, IL) and Maureen O'Neill (Cherry Hill, NJ) have earned All-Conference honors. Longtime Tufts diving coach Brad Snodgrass also was named the Diving Coach of the Year for the second straight year.

The Jumbos took fifth place at the meet behind the performances of the All-Conference trio. The top three finishers in each event receive the recognition. Swett won both the 1-meter and 3-meter diving events for the second straight year. She enjoyed one of the finest days of her successful career in the 3-meter competition. In the preliminaries on Sunday morning, her score of 528.50 broke the school, pool, conference and meet records. She then topped that with a score of 536.85 in the finals that night. On Friday, Swett won the 1-meter title with a 473.45 score.

Kono, a distance freestyle swimmer, swam three NCAA B-cut times and broke a record during the weekend. She earned the All-NESCAC honor for her second-place finish in the 1,650 freestyle. Her time of 17:31.65 was almost 15 seconds faster than the previous record of 17:46.59 held by Maureen Monahan since 1988.

O'Neill also had a good showing at her first conference championship meet. After improving her own school-record time in the 50 freestyle to 24.29 seconds in the preliminaries, she took third in the final with a 24.41 finish.

Snodgrass coached the Tufts divers to a very productive performance at NESCAC's. Besides Swett, sophomore Lindsay Gardel (Wayland, MA) took third in the 1-meter event with a 427.40 score. Tufts earned three of the top eight places in three-meter diving, including Gardel in fifth (404.40) and sophomore Kelsey Bell (Cohasset, MA) in eighth with 362.45 points.

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