Tim Connolly
Tim Connolly

2 More Silvers and 3 More Records Keep Bentley Men in 2nd at NE-10 Championships

NEW HAVEN, Conn. – It's been a week of silver medals and school records for the Bentley University Falcons at the Northeast-10 Conference Men's Swimming and Diving Championships and as a result, the Falcons will enter Sunday in second place among seven teams.

Southern Connecticut State, the host school, tops the scoring list with 632 points and Bentley follows at 476.5. Coach Mary Kay Samko's team has a lead of 91 points over third-place Le Moyne College after the third of four days of competition in the seven-team meet.

All six of Bentley's medals to date have been silver, including two that were earned Saturday night at SCSU's Hutchinson Natatorium.

The first silver came from sophomore Owen Karl (Rochester, N.Y./Brighton HS), who broke a school record for the fifth and sixth times this week. He posted a 143.11 in the prelims of the 200 yard freestyle, bettering the mark he set while competing in the 800 free relay on Thursday, and bettered that by more than a second with a 1:42.09 in the finals.

The other silver came with a school record-breaking effort in the 200 free relay as sophomores Sebastian Bury (Bellevue, Wash./Newport Senior HS), Tim Connolly (Dorcester, Mass./Boston Latin Acad.) and Nick Toselli (Barrington, R.I./Barrington HS) combined with senior Steve Sylvia (Westerly, R.I./Westerly HS) for a 1:24.63. That improved on the school record set in 2012 by a quartet that included Sylvia by 1.29 seconds.

Connolly, who broke the school record in the 100 backstroke on Friday with a 52.76 during the 400 medley, took fifth in the 100 back with a time of 52.87. Also in the 100 back, junior Josh Witty (Los Gatos, Calif./Los Gatos HS) was seventh in 53.75.

Freshman Davis Wilson (Ransom Canyon, Texas/Lubbock HS) was fourth in the 200 free (1:45.20), and classmates Dennis Witol (Bowie, Md./Eleanor Roosevelt HS) and Gregory Coleman (Lake Ronkonkoma, N.Y./Sachem North HS) were fifth and sixth, respectively, in the 400 individual medley. Witol finished in 4:17.49, just 0.11 off the school record, and Coleman followed in 4:21.32.

Sophomores Alex Liulakis (Tenafly, N.J./Tenafly HS) and Kevin Diefenbach (Hamilton, N.J./ Steinert HS) both had a seventh-place finish with Liulakis swimming the 100 butterfly in 52.78 and Diefenbach recording a 1:45.88 in the 200 free.

Junior Connor Mulvey-Hudson (Ardmore, Pa./St. Joseph's Prep) captured the "B" finals in the 100 breaststroke, finishing ninth overall in 59.17 seconds.

In the prelims of the three-meter diving, sophomore Colton Bridge (Tolland, Conn./Tolland HS) and freshman Nick Cilia (Brentwood, N.H./Exeter HS) qualified for Sunday's finals. Bridge was second with 399.45 and Cilia fourth in 269.15.

Sunday's prelims will get underway at 10 am and the championships will conclude with finals a 6 pm.