Swim competes in Purdue Invitational

Thursday, November 21

West Lafayette, Ind.

Grand Canyon

Purdue Invitational

Photo by: Deb Schaffer

11/23/2019 9:25:00 PM | Men's Swimming and Diving, Women's Swimming and Diving

Comprehensive Results

Men finish in 4th; women in 5th

By: Sierra Smith

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — The Grand Canyon swimming and diving teams competed at the three-day Purdue Invitational, where the men finished in fourth place with 469 points and the women finished fifth with 276 points.

Day 1

After Day 1 at Morgan J. Burke Aquatic Center in West Lafayette, Indiana, the men stood in third place with 148 points and the women in fifth place with 80.

The men finished third in the 200-yard freestyle relay thanks to sophomore Mazen Shoukri, sophomore Samuel McKenzie, freshman Omar Elsayd and sophomore Florent Janin swimming a time of 1 minute and 19.04 seconds, beating their preliminary time by 4.84 seconds.

The divers showed well with seniors Pietro Hufnagel Toscani and Nick Benson finishing with the top two scores in the men's 1-meter dive. Toscani finished with 363.30 points and Benson finished with 322. Freshman diver Sara Lameiro Castellanos finished third in the women's 3-meter dive, where she earned a score of 297.95.

Freshmen swimmer Mikhail Lyubavskiy finished fifth in the 500 freestyle in fifth place (4:24.16), beating his preliminary time by 2.35 seconds. Another Lopes fifth-place finish came from Shoukri in the 50 freestyle (20.03).

The Lopes finished Day 1 of the meet with a fourth-place finish in the 400 medley relay from freshmen Kainan Coerin and Amir Haviv, and sophomores Shoukri and McKenzie.

Day 2

After the second day of the Purdue meet, the men still stood in third place with 330 points while the women were in fifth with 186.

Sophomore Samuel McKenzie had the first top-five finish for the Lopes with a fourth-place finish in the 200-yard freestyle preliminary in 1:37.56. McKenzie took fifth place in the 200 freestyle final (1:37.67).

The GCU men were led by Shoukri with 41 points, followed by Lyubavskiy with 26 points. The diving is led by Toscani (40) and Benson (34).

Castellanos led the women with 30 points in the diving. Sophomore Cecelia Mayer led the swimmers with 12 points and junior Alyssa Christianson followed with eight points.

Day 3

Toscani had another solid performance, finishing first in the platform diving with a score of 293.05. He led the Lopes with 60 points over the weekend, earning first place in all of the dives.

Shoukri had the strongest swim of the day for the Lopes with a second-place finish in the 100 freestyle in 43.41 seconds. He finished the weekend with 58 points.

Castellanos led the women with 44 points, followed by freshman diver Ava Talorico with 22 points.

The Lopes will compete Sunday in long course time trials at the Morgan J. Burke Aquatic Center, where swimmers will pursue Olympic Trial cuts. See below for the schedule,

SUNDAY
• Warmups at 6 a.m. (Phoenix time)
• LCM Time Trials at 8 a.m.

• 500 Free
• 200 IM
• 50 Free
**Break**
• 400 IM
• 100 Fly
• 200 Free
• 100 Breast
• 100 Back
**Break**
• 400 IM
• 200 Back
• 100 Free
• 200 Breast
• 200 Fly
• 1500 Free

Follow GCU swimming and diving on Twitter and Instagram at @GCU_Swimming for more information throughout the season.