Feb. 15, 2007

HOUSTON, Texas -The 2007 Conference USA Swimming and Diving Championship continued this morning with with the preliminaries of the 500-yard freestyle, 200-yard individual medley and the 50-yard freestyle. The women's 3-meter diving preliminaries will begin around 1 p.m. The finals for those events are slated to begin around 6 p.m.

During day one, SMU's women unofficially won both relays, taking both the 200-yard medley relay and 800-yard freestyle relay to begin the championship. The 800 free relay team of Jennifer Blackman, Petra Klosova, Katie Roberts and Celina Lemmen touched the wall in 7:10.41, to break the record set by almost the same relay combination a year ago. Jennifer Blackman's 200-yard freestyle leadoff split in the 800 free relay was also a new meet record. Blackman broke the record set by her sister Candace, also established in 2006.

In the men's invitational, the SMU men took both relays and set two new meet records in the process. Hawaii's Magnus Frick set the new one-meter diving record with his score of 400.10.

Hawaii leads the men's meet with 117 points, followed by SMU with 96 and East Carolina with 94.

Women's team scores have now been calculated after Marshall was allowed to swim its missed relays. SMU leads after the first relay events with 80 points and Rice is in second with 68. The host Cougars are in third with 64 points, followed by Marshall with 58 and East Carolina with 30.

Click on the championship logo on the swimming and diving page to check out complete meet details. Updated event stats and times can be found at the following Live Stats link.

http://uhcougars.cstv.com/livestats/w-swim/index.htm 

Tickets will be available for purchase near the front of the CRWC Natatorium beginning one hour prior to the meet Thursday morning. All-session passes are available for $25 for adults or $10 for students with valid ID. Day tickets can be purchased for $10 for adults and $5 for students with ID. Students from any C-USA school with a valid free will be admitted free to the meet.

Fans can buy an official C-USA meet program and that session's heat sheet for only $5 beginning Thursday morning. Fans who buy a program and present it to sellers prior to each session can purchase additional heat sheets for future sessions for only $3 each.