Official Championship Page
Men's Records (PDF)
Women's Records (PDF)
CANTON, Ohio – The spring championship season continues this week with the introduction of the combined 2021 Great Midwest Athletic Conference/Mountain East Conference Swimming & Diving Championships hosted by Malone University.
The 3.5 day event starts on Tuesday, March 30, in the evening and will continue through Friday, April 2, as team champions and meet-specific individual award winners are eventually determined.
As it worked out in the reshuffled spring season, the Great Midwest/MEC championship meet is being conducted after the conclusion of the NCAA Championships that recently wrapped up in Birmingham, Ala.
In the COVID space to accommodate student-athlete seating in the bleachers, fans are not allowed in the C.T. Branin Natatorium for the entirety of this year’s conference championship event. The prelims and finals sessions will be streamed through both the Great Midwest Digital Network and Mountain East TV through a syndicated broadcast.
This marks the fourth consecutive year the C.T. Branin Natatorium has served as host for the event.
With membership shifting, the conference alignment will shape up differently this week with the Great Midwest featuring Findlay (men/women), Hillsdale (women), Ursuline (women) and host Malone (men/women).
The Mountain East members include Alderson Broaddus, Davis & Elkins, Fairmont State, Frostburg State, Notre Dame (OH), UNC Pembroke, West Virginia Wesleyan and Wheeling.
Tuesday evening’s festivities include men’s diving prelims followed by multiple relays and the 1,000 freestyles for both genders.
The Findlay men, coached by Andrew Makepeace, are going for the rareified four-peat as combined conference team champions. The ringleader for the Oilers is recently crowned national champion Tim Stollings, just a sophomore, was took home dual hardware as a freshman from this championship format.
Stollings stole the show in the 100 butterfly at nationals and was also All-American in two other events individually. Another NCAA qualifier in the field from the Mountain East is UNC Pembroke’s Gillian Manning, a senior who broke the combined conference overall record in the prelims of the 500 freestyle at national.
The Oilers’ women had a back-to-back championship run in 2018 and 2019 before Hillsdale stepped in and claimed the combined meet title in 2020. The Chargers, coached by Kurt Kirner, are proud of the label of conference defending champions and returning plenty of overall and meet record holders for this year’s edition.
The 2020-21 season has been a challenging one as programs have adhered to COVID protocol and had a number of meets / duals added and cancelled. In December, the Calvin Winter Invitational is a key meet annually for a number of schools where top 10 times are regularly recorded.
Malone’s Denise Quentin has a handful of top 10 times recorded throughout her career and is one to watch in the short sprint events. Hillsdale’s Leah Tunney is just a sophomore and owns the meet record in the 500 free and is No. 2 all time in the 1,000 free. The Chargers thrived on advancing numbers to the finals during their 2020 title run. The Oilers have traditionally been dominant in relays thanks to stars like Hanna Cederholm, Amanda Stiegal, Katy Kouvaris and Emma Barnes.
Stollings now owns 6 of the 10 best times on record in the 100 backstroke, including a new overall record in the prelims at nationals (46.96). In the Malone dual, he also reset the 50 freestyle record and owns 7 of the best 10 times in that event as well.