EMAIL THIS PAGE

AU Men Finish Third; Women Take Sixth at PL Swimming & Diving Championships
Liscinsky earns Men's Swimmer of the Meet honors for the second straight year

February 22, 2003 | Results

Senior Mark Liscinsky earned Men's Swimmer of the Meet honors for the second straight year.

LEWISBURG, Pa. -- In fine fashion, American University senior Mark Liscinsky (Olney, Md./Sherwood) captured Men's Swimmer of the Meet honors with three individual victories at the end of three days at the Patriot League Swimming & Diving Championships held at Bucknell University's Arthur D. Kinney Natatorium.

With the Bison sweeping the top spots in both the men's and women's competitions, the AU men's team finished third with 580.50 points behind BU's 812.50 points and Lehigh's 632.50 point total. Army (564), Colgate (365), Lafayette (342) and Holy Cross (283) filled out the rest of the field.

The American women's team stayed in sixth all three days of competition with a final of 300.50 points. Bucknell ran away with 812.50 points while defending champion Navy collected 575 points for second place. It marks the first time in Patriot League history that the same school captured the dual championships. Lehigh was third with 520 points followed by Colgate (494) and Army (431). Holy Cross took seventh with 193 points and Lafayette scored 157 points for eighth.

Liscinsky garnered three individual titles over the three days, smashing a 12 year old Patriot League record in the 200 freestyle in 1:36.75 and setting meet and league records in the 200 Individual Medley in 1:47.20. On Saturday, he completed the cycle with a new meet and pool record in the 200 backstroke in 1:45.86. The time is just one second off his own league record that he set at the Princeton Invitationals in December.

Junior Ethan Bassett (Potomac, Md./Winston Churchill) recorded his second individual victory of the meet with a new league, meet and pool record in the 200 breaststroke in 2:00.01. Teammate Dominick Szabo (North Wales, Penn./North Penn) took second in the same event in a time of 2:00.36. Both Bassett and Szabo are provisionally qualified for next month's NCAA Championships.

The final win for American came in the men's 400 freestyle relay in which Liscinsky, Bassett, Szabo and junior Erwan Jeffroy (Mareil-Marly, France/Lycee Jeanne D'Albret) beat the second-place Mountain Hawks by more than a second in a clocking of 3:03.76.

Junior Jessica Lidstrom (Stockholm, Sweden/The Swedish School in London) was one of two third-place finishers for the AU women, touching the wall in the 100 freestyle in 52.75. Senior Elizabeth West (Brentwood, Tenn./University School of Nashville) registered a third-place finish in the 200 butterfly in 2:08.64. Fellow senior Maria Ortiz (Caliz, Colombia/The Bolles School) was fourth in the 200 breaststroke in 2:26.43.

As Liscinsky took first in the 200 backstroke, teammates Mike Lawson (West Chester, Pa./Westtown), Jeffroy and Dan Sinetar (Cortland, N.Y./Cortland) took third, fourth and seventh in the same event, respectively.