The Barton Community College men's swimming team brought home a third place showing over the weekends A3 Performance Invitational in Grand Junction, Colorado.
The Cougars weathered a couple of obstacles over the weekend battling the altitude along with the heavy weight field.
Posting eight in the Top-5, adding another nine in the 6th through 10th positions, the Cougars scored 302 points but was forced to resign from Saturday evening's session as the Rocky Mountain winter weather had other plans in store. Host school Colorado Mesa tallied a meet best 1604.5 points edging out rival Colorado School of Mines' 973.5 points. Despite missing out on Saturday evening's finals, the Cougars edged out Adams State University by 25 points and Colorado Mesa's club squad by 158.
Writing his name into the Barton record books, Nikolas Ioannides claimed the lone gold for the Cougars touching the wall at 17:11.14 in the 1650 freestyle. The freshman edged out teammates Kacper Mayerberg and Kamren Hall capping the waves to a Barton sweep while posting the programs second and third fastest times at 17:35.80 and 18:07.36.
The Cougars came away with seven other school records and thirty-six new personal bests. Five different individuals paved the waves to new school records led by Kacper Mayerberg's pair coming in the 500 freestyle and 400 IM, Aidan Gantenbein in the 100 backstroke, Ryan Downing in the 100 breaststroke, Mateusz Lukaszczyk in the 200 backstroke and Chris Sprenger in the 200 IM. Barton's final record breaker came in the 400-medley relay consisting of Gantenbein, Downing, Kasprzyk and David Garcia anchoring for a fifth place finish.
Barton will take the Thanksgiving week off prior to wrapping up the first portion of the season December 6th-7th at the Hendrix Invitational in Conway, Arkansas.
New Personal Bests
100 Back: Aidan Gantenbein (51.71 – SR), Mateusz Lukaszczyk (51.79), Silas Steinert (1:00.71), Clayton Brown (1:01.80), Braden Augustine (1:03.44)
200 Back: Mateusz Lukaszczyk (1:56.10 - SR), Aidan Gantenbein (1:59.55), Clayton Brown (2:19.47)
100 Breast: Ryan Downing (57.66 – SR), Chris Sprenger (58.66), Kenny Ruiz (1:05.10)
200 Breast: Chris Sprenger (2:10.45), Ergi Veli (2:13.78), Cesar Robles (2:48.38)
50 Free: Carlon McClerkin (21.45), Aidan Gantenbein (21.97), Rielly Bannon (22.79), Braden Augustine (24.02), Kenny Ruiz (24.33), Clayton Brown (25.72), Cesar Robles (26.12)
100 Free: Carlon McClerkin (46.86)
100 Fly: Ryan Downing (51.65), Mateusz Lukaszczyk (51.75), Carlon McClerkin (53.75), Kenny Ruiz (53.78)
200 Fly: Albert Kasprzyk (1:57.48), Kacper Mayerberg (1:58.32)
200 Free: Aidan Gantenbein (1:48.45)
500 Free: Kacper Mayerberg (4:52.77 – SR), Kamren Hall (5:05.34)
1650 Free: Nikolas Ioannides (17:11.14 – SR)
200 IM: Chris Sprenger (1:57.37 – SR), Ryan Downing (1:58.87)
400 IM: Kacper Mayerberg (4:17.23 – SR), Ergi Veli (4:20.75)