Polar Bears finish second at OAC Championships

Feb. 16, 2008

By Tim Glon

AKRON — The Ohio Northern women’s swimming and diving team finished second at the 2008 Ohio Athletic Conference Championships Thursday-Saturday at the University of Akron's Ocasek Natatorium.

The Polar Bears finished with 257 points, just nine points behind John Carroll, who won the team title with 266 points. Mount Union was third with 151, Baldwin-Wallace was fourth with 100 and Wilmington was fifth with 91.

Ohio Northern finished 1-2-3 in the 200 back. Lacey Shumate defended her 2007 title, touching in 2:12.34 - just .45 of a second ahead ahead of teammate Jillian Huber (2:12.79), who won the 100 back on Thursday.

Kim Randall also earned All-OAC honors with a third place finish in 2:17.11. Sara Oswald was seventh in 2:22.17.

Hannah Bukowy made it a clean sweep of the breast stroke events, winning the 200 breast in 2:27.41 on Saturday. She earlier won the 100 breast in an OAC record 1:07.18. Janelle Cain finished seventh in 2:38.76 and Atlantis Richter was eighth in 2:41.32.

Katherine Moore garnered All-OAC kudos with a second place finish in the 100 free in 54.82 seconds. Cassie Fennell was fifth in the event in 56.59.

Terri Lynn Shigle finished second in the 1-meter diving with 353.95 points. She is now a two-time All-OAC honoree in the event after winning the title as a freshman in 2007. Brittany Spengler finished eighth with 285.45 points.

The 400 free relay team of Huber, Cassie Fennell, Katherine Moore and Randall earned All-OAC honors with a second place finish in 4:34.39.

Northern went 4-5-6 in the 200 fly, with Robin Linkenheil finishing fourth in 2:33.04, Luisa Chinchilla finishing fifth in 2:33.82 and Delaney Banas finishing sixth in 2:35.53.

In the 1650 free, Amanda Lovell finished seventh in 19:09.71.

The Polar Bears will now wait until the NCAA Division III Championships field is released on March 1 to see who will compete March 20-22 at Miami Univeristy in Oxford, Ohio.