McLean County Times

The Illinois Wesleyan University swim and dive teams participated in the College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin Swim and Dive Championships in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin. On Thursday, February 20th, they reached the halfway point of the four-day event. Notably, one athlete from IWU received All-CCIW recognition.

During the morning sessions, swimmers competed in preliminary races with the top 16 advancing to evening finals. Both men's and women's teams began with the 200-yard freestyle relay and concluded with the 400-yard medley relay.

The women's team for the 200-yard freestyle relay included Isabella Cano, Kayleigh Kuschewski, Emily Marks, and Alexa Starkey. They finished fourth with a time of 1:41.04. The men's team consisted of Carter Dilger, Colin McKibben, Tate Thomas, and Ben Huk who placed sixth overall at 1:30.85.

Junior Natalie Porter earned a runner-up medal in the 500-yard freestyle event with a time of 5:12.64 in the finals after improving her preliminary time by seven seconds to set a new personal best at 5:11.28.

Carter Dilger also showed strong performance in the men's 500-yard freestyle preliminaries with a time of 4:43.12, cutting off significant seconds from his previous best to place eighth overall in finals.

Kayleigh Kuschewski finished fourth in the women's 200-yard individual medley at nearly her career-best time while Sam Borre improved significantly on her previous record.

In other events, both women’s and men’s teams competed in relays; Borre led her team to finish fourth while McKibben's team ended fifth overall.

Day three will continue tomorrow starting with preliminaries at 10:30 a.m., followed by finals at 6 p.m., available via live stats and streaming on CCIW.org under Swim Championships page.