Men finish 3rd at WAC meet

Wednesday, February 26

Houston, Texas

10 a.m.

Grand Canyon

WAC Championships

Photo by: Juan De Leon

3/1/2020 4:34:00 PM | Men's Swimming and Diving

Day 1 WAC Results Day 2 WAC Results Day 3 WAC Results Final Results

GCU scores 559.5 points at conference showdown

By: Sierra Smith

HOUSTON — The Grand Canyon men's swimming and diving team finished the WAC Championships in third place with 559.50 points on Saturday.

The 2019 WAC champions finished behind UNLV (864 points) and Air Force (692).

There were several great swims on Saturday with new GCU records and personal-best times.

Lopes sophomore Mazen Shoukri won the 100-yard freestyle, giving him his second individual WAC title of the week. He swam the race in 43.25 seconds, which moves to the third-best time in GCU history.

A new GCU record was set in the 1,650 freestyle by sophomore Alonso Carazo Barbero (15:21.51), which also earned him the bronze medal at the WAC Championships.

For the diving, Lopes senior Pietro Hufnagel Toscani placed in all three dives. On Saturday, he placed third in the platform dive with 287.25 points, giving him two golds and a bronze finish on the week.

Day 3 recap

Toscani captured his second WAC diving title this week with a win in the 1-meter dive, scoring 322.70 on Friday.

The Lopes began the meet with the 200 freestyle relay. Shoukri, sophomore Samuel McKenzie, freshman Omar Elsayd, and sophomore Florent Janin finished in 1 minute 19.61 seconds to earn a second-place finish.

Carazo Barbero had a personal-record day in the 400 individual medley (3:50.17). He placed second in the conference and dropped 6.82 seconds from his entry time.

Day 2 recap

On Thursday morning, Shoukri won the 50 freestyle with a time of 19.71 seconds and teammate Mikhail Lyubavskiy placed second in the 500 freestyle with a time of 4:23.23.

In 1-meter diving, Hufnagel Toscani finished first in the preliminaries with a score of 302.85. Senior teammate Nick Benson won the B final in the 1-meter dive, scoring 277.50 points.

GCU entered the final two days of competition in fourth place with 172 points, trailing Wyoming (180), UNLV (182) and Air Force (247).

Day 1 recap

Hufnagel Toscani became the first Lope to win a conference title when he took first place in 3-meter diving with a score of 358.40. Toscani and Benson made the final cuts after morning preliminaries. Benson finished sixth.

The first event on Wednesday was the 200-yard medley relay, where Shoukri, freshman Amir Haviv, freshman Elijah Clements and Janin took sixth place with a time of 1:27.48 seconds.

Shoukri's split time for the 50 backstroke (22.01) ranks second all-time for GCU. Haviv's split in the 50 breaststroke (25.01) ranks eighth in the GCU record book. Clements swam the 50 butterfly split in 21.02 seconds, which ranks fourth in GCU history.

The Lopes' young 800 freestyle relay team of freshman Briggs Shiller, Sam McKenzie, Janin and freshman Griffin McKean finished in fourth place (6:29.16). The time ranks sixth in GCU history. Each split time made its way to the program's top-10 lists.

Shiller's split time ranks ninth in the individual 200 freestyle (1:37.99). For a relay split 200 freestyle, McKenzie ranks eighth (1:37.38), Janin ranks fifth (1:36.55), and McKean ranks seventh (1:37.24).

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