Wilkes Men's Swimming Defeats Lycoming in Close Meet 109-96
WILKES-BARRE – A win in the last event of the meet secured the victory for the Wilkes University men's swimming team on Saturday afternoon at the Wyoming Valley Catholic Youth Center (CYC). This marks the first time the Colonels have beaten the Warriors in the five years since the swimming program has been restarted.
Results
Wilkes continues its strong start to the season as it improves to 5-1 overall and 3-0 in the Middle Atlantic Conference (MAC). The loss drops Lycoming to 2-4 overall, with all of those meets coming against MAC opponents.
Deciding the winner came down to the last event of the day, the 400 Freestyle Relay. The Wilkes team of Nick Martino (Hummelstown, PA/Lower Dauphin), Ziyad Khafagy (Whitehall, PA/Whitehall), Christopher Daley (Center Valley, PA/Allentown Central Catholic) and Joseph Antolick (Ringtown, PA/North Schuylkill) edged out Lycoming by less than a second to win the race and secure the meet victory for the Colonels.
Wilkes took both relay events as they started the day off with Timothy Sechler-Stone (Allentown, PA/Salisbury), Trey Harloff (Apex, NC/Apex Friendship), Justin Burda (Allentown, PA/Allentown Central Catholic) and Jared Byrne (Pequea, PA/Penn Manor) picking up the win in 3:47.28.
Harloff added to his relay win by taking first-place in both the 200 IM (2:08.31) and the 200 Breaststroke (2:24.67).
Byrne continues to etch is name all over the program's record books as he won the 500 Freestyle with a time of 5:03.47 to break Antolick's record of 5:04.37 from the Diamond Invitational.
The Colonels captured the meet by winning only five of the 11 events which is a testament to the depth of the group as a whole. This was evident by Wilkes swimmers being peppered throughout the second to fifth place spots in several events including the 1000 Freestyle, 200 Freestyle, 100 Freestyle, 50 Freestyle, 200 Butterfly and 200 Backstroke.
Wilkes returns to the pool on Saturday, December 8th when it welcomes Arcadia to the Wyoming Valley CYC at 1:00 p.m. for another MAC meet.
