CARBONDALE, Ill.—University of Evansville swimmers Alon Baer (Gesher Haziv, Israel), Patrik Vilbergsson (Kopavogur, Iceland) and Jackson Caudill (Mount Sterling, Ky./Montgomery County) combined to break parts of three individual school records five total times  on the final day of competition at the 2022 Mid-American Conference Championships on Saturday in Carbondale, Illinois. UE also bested a more than 20-year-old school record in the 400-yard Freestyle Relay to cap the meet.
“This was an incredible week for the men’s program,” said UE head swimming coach Stuart Wilson. “It’s hard to list all of the things we have accomplished this week, but one thing that this team has shown is heart!
“You can see their confidence growing each day, believing that anything is possible. They earned it this week, and I couldn’t be prouder of them.”
Baer became the first male swimmer in UE history to go under two minutes in the 200-yard Breaststroke, as he broke the mark with a time of 1:59.81 in the preliminary round in the afternoon. He then lowered that mark to 1:58.70 while placing second overall in the MAC in the ‘A Finals.’ It marked his second podium finish of the meet, after earning an NCAA ‘B Cut’ in the 100-yard Breaststroke on Friday with a second-place finish.
Vilbergsson then lowered the UE school records in both the 1,000- and 1,650-yard Freestyle events in the same swim, as he posted a 1,000-yard Free split of 9:30.95 on his way to a 1,650-yard Free time of 15.41.87, to lower the UE school record by over 15 seconds. Vilbergsson’s record in the 1,000 Free would not last long though, as Caudill lowered that mark with a split time of 9:26.07 on his way to a 1,650 Free mark of 15:52.40. Vilbergsson placed fourth, while Caudill finished sixth in the MAC with those times.
Evansville then broke the 20-year-old record in the 400-yard Freestyle Relay with a combined time of 2:59.56 by senior Oskar Menkhaus (Davidson, N.C./William A. Hough), junior Riccardo Di Domenico (Johannesburg, South Africa), and freshmen Jakob Grundbacher (Long Beach, Calif.) and Daniel Santos Lopez (Madrid, Spain). The previous school mark was 3:00.71, set by Scott Hobson, Dave Nel, Darko Kermiciev and Nikola Kalabic in 2002.
Vilbergsson and Baer both earned second-team All-MAC honors, after both scoring 37 points in the championships for UE. Overall, Evansville finished fifth as a team, with its highest team score in MAC Championship history of 354.0. UE set new school records 13 different times over the course of the four-day meet.
