The Seattle University men’s swim team won both relays contested Friday night as the first day of the 66th annual Husky Invitational, hosted by the Husky Swimming Foundation, took place at the Weyerhaeuser King County Aquatic Center.
Seattle U began the evening session by winning the 200 freestyle relay, as Tanner Schelling (Boise, Idaho), Jack Baldoni (Applegate, Calif.), Matt Morris (Lufkin, Texas), and Will Wertz (Richland, Wash.) combined for a time of 1:24.87, over a second quicker than the second-place squad. They concluded the session by finishing first in the 400 medley relay, with Wertz, Gabe Wheeler (Round Rock, Texas), Baldoni, and Schelling teaming to post a mark of 3:25.79.
After finishing fourth in the morning preliminaries with a time of 4:38.38, Nick Connors (Richland, Wash.) finished second in the “A” final of the 500 freestyle, lowering his time to 4:37.10. Wertz qualified for the “B” final in the 50 freestyle with a preliminary time of 21.54 seconds, and then finished sixth in the evening race in 21.62 seconds. Alec Barnard (Everett, Wash.) posted a preliminary time of 21.92 seconds to advance to the “D” final, where he finished in a tie for third place in 21.91 seconds.
In the 200 individual medley, Wheeler followed up a preliminary time of 1:57.10 with a mark of 1:56.58 to finish seventh in the “A” final. Ben Nussbaum (Issaquah, Wash.) cut almost two full seconds off his time from the preliminaries (1:58.26) to the evening session (1:56.33), finishing fifth in the “B” final. Sam Donohue (Portland, Ore.) finished 60th in the preliminaries in 2:01.66.
“Nick had a really solid day, and Ben posted a lifetime-best swim in the 200 IM,” Seattle U head swimming coach Craig Nisgor said. “I am pretty happy with how the guys performed today, and I hope they will be able to keep it up the rest of the weekend.”
The Redhawk men contributed 206 points to the team’s combined total of 334 points, good enough for fifth place after the first day of competition.
The second day of the Husky Invitational takes place Saturday, Dec. 6, with the preliminaries scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m., followed by the finals at 6 p.m.