Rice University
UIW Invitational
Swimmers Dominate Opening Day of UIW Invitational
12/17/2016 12:00:00 AM | Swimming & Diving
SAN ANTONIO – The Rice trio of Rylee Linhardt, Kate Nezelek and Jaecey Parham each won an individual event and swam on a winning relay to pace the Owl swimmers on the opening day of the Incarnate Word Invitational Saturday evening in San Antonio.
With convincing first place finishes in each of Saturday's five events, Rice is comfortably in first place in the four-team meet with 372 points. North Texas is second with 281 points while meet host Incarnate Word is third (229 points) and TCU fourth (182).
After a full morning of preliminary swims to qualify for event finals, the Rice foursome of Nezelek, Shelbi Ragsdale, Alicia Caldwell and Lauren Rhodes led off the evening session by combining for a win in the 200-freestyle relay with a time of 1:33.01. Nezelek (23.47), Rhodes (23.49) and Ragsdale (23.99) then returned three events later to go first, second and fourth (respectively) in the 50-free.
It was a strong showing by the Owl sprinters, but the team's distance racers had an eye-opening finish of their own. Freshman Rylee Linhardt swam a collegiate-best 4:50.41 to lead a Rice 1-2-3-4-5-6 finish in the 500-freetyle. The Blue & Gray 500 landslide included Kaitlyn Swinney with a career-best 4:51.00 for second place, Hanna Huston (4:52.33), Claire Therien (4:55.35), Sydney Franzen (4:55.99) and Sarah Nowaski (4:58.61) to close out each of the top six spots.
Junior Jaecey Parham swam a 2:01.32 to lead a 1-2 Rice finish in the 200-individual medley with Linhardt (2:04.15). Parham then helped Rice close out the evening session by swimming the butterfly leg of the winning 400-medley relay (3:44.65). For the record the Blue & Gray also posted 1-2 finish in the relay as Rice's ‘B' squad beat ten other entries.
Players Mentioned
