Wilkes Men's Swimming Opens Season with Victory
MADISON, N.J. – The Wilkes University men's swimming team defeated Middle Atlantic Conference foe FDU-Florham (0-1) 152-51 on Saturday afternoon. With the win, men's swimming starts the season with a victory for the first time since its relaunch in 2014-2015.
The Colonels started the afternoon by taking first and second place in the 200 yard medley relay with the team of Timothy Sechler-Stone (Allentown, PA/Salisbury), Shawn Shaw (Athens, PA/Athens), Justin Burda (Allentown, PA/Allentown Central Catholic) and Jared Byrne (Pequea, PA/Penn Manor) finishing with a time of 1:47.06 to earn Wilkes 11 points.
Freshman Trey Harloff (Apex, NC/Apex Friendship) was a triple winner in the 1000 freestyle, 100 butterfly and 100 breaststroke.
Wilkes took the top three spots in the 1000 yard freestyle as Harloff earned first place with a time of 11:25.70, followed by Christopher Daley (Center Valley, PA/Allentown Central Catholic) (11:28.24) and Daniel Mack (Hanover, PA/New Oxford) (12:26.13) to earn the Colonels a total of 16 points.
The Colonels captured the top three spots in the 100 yard butterfly as Harloff (57.15) narrowly beat out Burda (57.40) and Tyler Weatherby (Sewell, NJ/Gloucester County Institutional Technology) (59.13).
Harloff's third win of the meet came in another Wilkes sweep, this time the 100 yard breaststroke, as he finished in 1:04.78, ahead of Connor Brought (Wellsboro, PA/Wellsboro) (1:09.88) and Shaw (1:12.34).
Joseph Antolick (Ringtown, PA/North Schuylkill) won the 500 yard freestyle with a time of 5:10.52 while capturing second place in the 200 yard freestyle at 1:56.91.
Ziyad Khafagy (Whitehall, PA/Whitehall) won the 50 yard freestyle by .08 hundredths of a second over FDU-Florham's Sam DiLiberto with a time of 24.60
Byrne won twice on Saturday as he ran away with the 200 yard IM, finishing in 2:08.97 to win by five seconds before capturing the 100 yard backstroke (59.16).
Wilkes also earned the top three places in the 100 yard freestyle as Khafagy (54.37) edged out Nick Martino (Hummelstown, PA/Lower Dauphin) (54.48) and Cameron Aspey (Dover, PA/Dover) (57.41) to win his second event of the afternoon.
The Colonels ended the day by sweeping the 200 yard freestyle relay with the team of Antolick, Sechler-Stone, Burda and Martino swimming past their teammates with a time of 1:35.66.
Wilkes men's swimming hits the road on October 20th for a meet at Mount Saint Mary College at 1:00 p.m.
