Lake Forest swept Saturday's diving competition and won four consecutive swimming events on day two of the 2018 Midwest Conference Championship Meet at Grinnell College. Both Forester teams remain in second place in the team standings.
Forester junior Heath Ogawa set his second conference record of the meet with 599.75 points in the 3-meter event. It was his third championships in as many seasons in the event and he has also captured the league's last two 1-meter titles. As he was in Friday's 1-meter competition, Lake Forest senior Matthew Demirs was the runner-up and his career-best score of 425.95 strengthens his fourth-place standing in team history. While Ogawa now owns five conference titles in his career, sophomore Lizzie Johns is celebrating her first after tallying 450.25 points off the 1-meter board. That score ranks her fourth in school history and is her second NCAA Division III-qualifying mark in the event this season, earning her a trip to the NCAA Division III Region 1 Diving Championships March 2-3. Fellow sophomore Victoria Miller finished fifth on Saturday with a career-high 342.10 points.
The final three of 11 rounds of diving took place after the 400-medley relay, the first event of Saturday's finals session. Both Lake forest teams placed second with junior Frederick Weichmann, freshmen Ethan Hare and Nathan Ulm, and junior Blake Rhodes finishing in 1:35.68 and senior Brigit Dunne teaming with freshman Corynn Christjansen, Susan Guo, and Sarah Truxton to complete the women's race in 1:50.64.
Saturday night's first individual swimming event was the men's 400-IM, where freshman Evan Weller was the runner-up in 4:12.79 and classmate Max Rowland placed third in 4:15.09. Sophomores Rachel Trevillian and Ani Karagianis represented Lake Forest in the women's race and finished fifth (4:50.36) and seventh (4:53.89), respectively.
The Foresters took three of the top six places in the men's 100-butterfly, led by freshman Thomas Anderson in third with a time of 52.41 seconds. Ulm finished fifth in 52.67 seconds and Rhodes sixth in 52.84. Lake Forest's title streak started in the women's race, where Guo broke a 31-year-old program record with her winning time of 57.74 seconds. Sophomore Hannah Stinson was sixth in the event in 1:00.96.
After finishing first in the 200-IM on Friday, senior David Bunting claimed another title in Saturday's 200-freestyle. His time of 1:43.30 was a full second ahead of the runner-up. Fellow senior Landon Longfield was also in the A-final of the event, where he placed seventh in 1:46.02. Half of the field in the women's 200-freestyle was from Lake Forest, including Christjansen, who won the event in 1:57.19, which ranks her fourth in program history. Senior Lily McCarthy was the runner-up in 1:57.52 while classmate Toni Corbani finished sixth (2:00.62) and sophomore Kelsey Mitchell seventh (2:00.81).
The Foresters' fourth straight win came from Hare in the men's 100-breaststroke and his 57.60 is tied for the third-best time in team annals. Fellow freshman Ryan Casseday finished eighth in the event in 1:01.20.
Lake Forest turned in a pair of second-place performances in the 100-backstroke, Weichmann with a time of 52.76 seconds in the men's race and Dunne in the women's in 59.37 seconds. Dunne was followed by freshman Fallon Longfield (1:01.20) in third place and Truxton (1:01.23) in fourth.
Two more runner-up finishes came from the Foresters' 800-freestyle relay teams. On the men's side Anderson, Longfield, Hare, and Bunting completed the race in 7:04.09 and Guo, Corbani, Christjansen, and McCarthy posted a time of 8:00.17 in the women's race.
The Forester men have earned 498 points in the first two days of competition, 208 more than third-place Ripon College but still well behind Grinnell, which has 620. Grinnell has an even more comfortable lead on the women's side with 686 points, 199 ahead of Lake Forest. Lawrence is third with 376.
Sunday's prelims session will begin at 9:00 a.m. and the finals will start at 4:30 p.m.
