IOWA CITY, Iowa – The University of Evansville women’s swimming team’s relay squads had strong showings in the 200-Yard Medley Relay and 800-Yard Freestyle Relay on Wednesday in the first day of action at the 2023 Missouri Valley Conference Women’s Swimming & Diving Championships in Iowa City, Iowa.
UE’s 200 Medley Relay squad of junior Iryna Tsesiul (Minsk, Belarus), senior Sage Moore (Lexington, Ohio/Lexington), sophomore Sveva Brugnoli (Rome, Italy) and senior Allison McDonald (Cape Girardeau, Mo./Central) won their heat with a time of 1:43.70. The time was just over a second off of the UE school record of 1:42.62 set at last year’s Valley Championships.
In the 800 Free Relay, the quartet of seniors Sarah Jahns (Lilburn, Ga./Parkview), Maya Cunningham (Yakima, Wash./Eisenhower) and Sonsoles Aguayo (Jerez, Spain) and sophomore Mari Müller (Zurich, Switzerland) teamed up to post a time of 7:38.14, which was over 15 seconds faster than UE’s seed time for the meet. The 15.34 second improvement by UE was the largest of any of the 800 Free Relay teams at the Valley Championships.
“Overall, I thought it was a good start to the conference championships,” said UE head coach Stuart Wilson. “We had some people post some good splits, and it was good to be able to get back to racing after a month of training. There were a lot of positives to take from tonight into the rest of the conference meet.”
The MVC Championships will continue on Thursday with preliminary swims in the 500-Yard Freestyle, the 200 IM, the 50-Yard Freestyle, and the one-meter diving competition taking place beginning at 10:30 a.m. central time. Event finals for all of those events, as well as the 200-Yard Freestyle Relay competition will take place on Thursday night beginning at 6 p.m. Fans can watch the action live at www.youtube.com/@UNIAthleticsPanthers/streams, while also following along on the Meet Mobile App for live results
