Women’s Swimming Team Unveils Championship Banner on Senior Day

The Wells College women's swimming wrapped up its season by hosting visiting Penn State Behrend on Saturday, April 3.

The event gave the team an opportunity to officially unveil its North Eastern Athletic Conference championship banner from last season, the team's last in the NEAC as it's now a member of the Allegheny Mountain Collegiate Conference. Head coach Trish George also took the opportunity to honor Jeanna Swift (Utica, N.Y.) as a departing senior on this year's team. Times were improved in every scoring event if Wells swimmers competed in the same events in their last meet and are noted below.

"Jeanna swam all four years and her commitment showed as her team named her women's team captain. Throughout her four years, she has been primarily a flyer and IM'er. Last season she added the experience of swimming the 200 fly. All of Jeanna's hard work paid off as she earned a podium spot in the 100 fly at our NEAC championships for her first time last season. That podium spot helped the team win NEAC championships as well. It takes a special person to want to swim fly and we are all going to miss Jeanna next season!" George said.

Against Penn State Behrend, the team finished with seven top-2 performances on the day highlighted by a final relay in the 200-yard freestyle and a first-place finish with a time of 2:01.63 with the foursome comprising Saoirse Murphy-Collins (Syracuse, N.Y), Hailey Onofre (Waverly, N.Y), Rowan Mayette (Massena, N.Y.) and Nicole D'Aurizio (Wolcott, N.Y.).

Murphy-Collins, Mayette and Feleesha Jones (San Angelo, Tx.) each finished with a pair of second-place finishes in individual competition to lead the Express.

Murphy-Collins was just .27 seconds off the lead in the 200-yard freestyle with a time of 2:16.02. She also finished second in the 500-yard freestyle with a time of 6:08.67. From her last meet at Cazenovia, Murphy-Collins knocked off 42.84 seconds in the latter event.

Mayette was off the lead by slim margins as well in her pair of second-place finishes. Mayette was .51 seconds off the lead in the 50-yard butterfly with a time of 31.54 and .79 seconds off the lead in the 100-yard backstroke with a 1:11.96 time. Mayette cut 1.05 seconds from her last competition in the butterfly and 2.63 seconds in the backstroke.

Jones was second in the 50- and 100-yard breaststrokes with a 40.73 time in the former and 1:28.32 time in the latter. Jones improved her times from her last competition by .86 seconds in the 50-yard and 2.64 seconds in the 100-yard.

D'Aurizio also had a second-place finish, but in the 50-yard freestyle with a 32.41 time.

Onofree, Alexis Huff (Baldwinsville, N.Y.), Janelle Smalls (Boston, Mass.) and Swift combined for a half-dozen third-place finishes and six of the team's 34 points on the day.

Onofree had a pair of third-place finishes in breaststroke events with times of 41.60 in the 50-yard and 1:30.71 in the 100-yard.

Huff also had two third-place finishes in the 100-yard freestyle with a 1:14.52 time and in the 50-yard butterfly with a 45.74 time.

Smalls was third in the 50-yard backstroke (43.15), while Swift finished third in the 100-yard butterfly (1:41.65) to round up the point scorers for Wells.

Of the third-place finishers, only three swimmers competed in the same event from the last meet with all showing improvements. Onofre knocked off times in her breaststroke events with .04 in the 50-yard and .94 in the 100-yard. Huff bested her freestyle time by 4.55 seconds and Swift knocked off 7.33 seconds in the 100-yard butterfly.