Men top WAC standings after Day 1

HOUSTON -- The Grand Canyon men's swimming and diving team leads the WAC Championships after the first of four days of competition while the Lopes women's team sits in fifth place.

With both teams looking to capture their first WAC titles, the men could not have asked for a better start. They accumulated 114 points, 19 ahead of second-place Wyoming, by winning all three of Wednesday's events.

The first event win came in the 200-yard medley relay when Mark Nikolaev, Bogdan Plavin, Daniil Antipov and Mazen Shoukri earned the the Lopes 40 points by winning in 1 minute, 25.78 seconds.

Nikolaev, Antipov, Florent Janin and Samuel McKenzie completed the Day 1 sweep of the relays by winning the 800 freestyle relay in 6:25.07, beating their previous top time by 5.41 seconds.

"We got off to a pretty good start," Lopes head coach Steve Schaffer said. "Our men got the job done winning the both relays, but the men will have to bring it every day if they want to hold on to first place.'"

After finishing seventh in the 1-meter dive prelims with 252.15 points, Pietro Hufnagel Toscani came away with the first-place finish with 333.8 points, earning 20 points for GCU. Teammate Nick Benson finished fifth with 273.1 points to earn 14 points.

"Pietro showed a lot of resilience and set a great example for the rest of our team," Schaffer said. "He struggled in the preliminary round but managed to qualify for finals and was able to shake that off and come back and win the finals, completing the sweep of the golds tonight."

The women scored 66 points Wednesday, just six points out of fourth place. Their scoring started with a fifth-place finish in the 200 medley relay, as Brigit Van Der Vegte, Marina McInelly, Emily Muteti and Diana Jaruseviciute swam it in 1:42.18 to earn 28 points and beat their previous best of 1:43.60.

McInelly, Salma Zaitoun, Robyn Edwards and Roaia Mashaly took seventh in the 800 freestyle relay with a time of 7:35.88

In the 3-meter dive final, Menna El-Midany finished eighth with a score of 257.20, after placing second in the preliminaries with a score of 291.45.

"The women swam very well on the 200 medley relay and very bravely on the 800 freestyle relay," Schaffer said. "Menna did a great job earning a spot in the 3-meter finals and Nicole Yeakley was a very pleasant surprise, placing sixth in the consolation finals."

Action resumes Thursday with the 500 freestyle, 200 individual medley, 50 freestyle, 200 freestyle relay, the men's 3-meter dive and the women's 1-meter dive.

"Many of our swimmers who were not on relays today swam time trials to work out their first-swim jitters and they swam great," Schaffer said. "This is a long meet and it will have its ups and downs, but hopefully we can build off of today's momentum. This is a very young group of student-athletes and this week will be a great opportunity to lay a foundation to build up over the next few years."

Day 1 WAC Championships standings

Men
1. Grand Canyon - 114
2. Wyoming - 95
3. UNLV - 94
4. California Baptist - 83
5. Air Force - 82
6. CSU Bakersfield - 67
7. Seattle U - 24

Women
1. Northern Arizona - 133
2. Idaho - 97
3. New Mexico State - 89
4. Northern Colorado - 72
5. Grand Canyon - 66
6. CSU Bakersfield - 64
7. California Baptist - 62
8. Seattle U - 44

Thursday, Feb. 28
Women's 1-Meter Diving
Men's 3-Meter Diving
500 Freestyle
200 Individual Medley
50 Freestyle
200 Freestyle Relay

Friday, Mar. 1
400 Individual Medley
100 Butterfly
200 Freestyle
100 Breaststroke
100 Backstroke
400 Medley Relay

Saturday, Mar. 2
200 Backstroke
100 Freestyle
200 Breaststroke
200 Butterfly
1650 Freestyle
400 Freestyle Relay

All information regarding the WAC Championships can be found here.

Preliminary competition will begin at 9:30 a.m. (Phoenix time), with the finals beginning at 5 p.m. (Phoenix time) each day this week.

Live stats will be available throughout the week for swimming and diving. There will be video of diving and swimming preliminaries on the WAC's Facebook, with the finals being streamed on the WAC Digital Network.

For more on GCU swimming and diving, follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @GCU_Swimming.

Grand Canyon University Athletics

Players Mentioned

Daniil Antipov

Nick Benson

Robyn Edwards

Menna El-Midany

Florent Janin

Diana Jaruseviciute

Roaia Mashaly

Marina McInelly

Samuel McKenzie

Emily Muteti

Mark Nikolaev

Bogdan Plavin

Mazen Shoukri

Brigit Van Der Vegte

Nicole Yeakley

Salma Zaitoun

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