EVANSVILLE, Ind.—Based off of individual performances from the 2021-22 swimming season, 15 members of the University of Evansville swimming and diving teams – 10 males and five females – have qualified for the CSCAA National Invitational Championships. The NIC meet, college swimming’s equivalent to basketball’s NIT, will take place Thursday, March 10 through Saturday, March 12 at the Beacon Health Aquatic Center in Elkhart, Indiana.
To qualify for the National Invitational Championships, swimmers had to either be an individual or relay champion from one of 24 different Division I conference, or swimmers had to meet either an “Automatic” (or ‘A Cut’) or a “Bonus” (‘B Cut’) time standard, set forth by the CSCAA. Invitations to the event were sent out to qualifying participants and schools after the selection of the NCAA Swimming Championship field earlier today.
On the men’s side, 10 Purple Aces qualified after a record-setting Mid-American Conference performance, in which UE set school records 13 different times over the four-day meet. UE will be represented by seniors Zeke Metz (Topeka, Kan./Seaman) and Oskar Menkhaus (Davidson, N.C./William A. Hough), juniors Max Dehen (Ramsey, Minn./Anoka) and Riccardo Di Domenico (Johannesburg, South Africa), sophomores Alon Baer (Gesher Haziv, Israel) and Grant Kay (Ellicott City, Md./Hebron), and freshmen Jakob Grundbacher (Long Beach, Calif.), Daniel Santos Lopez (Madrid, Spain), Carlos Souto Vilas (A Coruna, Spain) and Patrik Vilbergsson (Kopavogur, Iceland).
On the women’s side, five Purple Aces qualified for the NIC meet after UE broke four school records at the Missouri Valley Conference championships in mid-February. UE will be represented by senior Jessie Steele (Houston, Texas/Klein), juniors Allison McDonald (Cape Girardeau, Mo./Cape Central) and Sage Moore (Lexington, Ohio/Lexington), sophomore Iryna Tsesiul (Minsk, Belarus), and freshman Sveva Brugnoli (Rome, Italy) at the National Invitational Championships on the women’s side.
