Back with a splash
Falcons earn team bronze in second season opener

SOUTH EUCLID, Ohio – BRADFORD, Penn. – The Notre Dame Swimming & Diving team started the 2007 season off in style with a third place finish at the Pitt-Bradford Relays on Saturday. Penn State-Behrend (PA) won the meet with 180 points and Penn State- Altoona (PA) ended the day in second place with 152 points. NDC finished third with 112 in the combined results and finished first in the women’s competition.

The Falcons earned three gold medals in the 2007 debut and finished in the top three in eight different events. NDC garnered the first medal of the day in the 300 Yard Butterfly Relay when the team of Julia Bridgford (Fr/Dewitt, MI), Lina DiFranco (Jr/Willoughby Hills, OH), Shannan Fitzgerald (So/Hewitt, NJ) and Maria Buenano (So/Guayaquil, Ecuador) touched in first with a time of 3:14.36.  Stephanie Pion (So/Standish, ME), Angela Giamei (Jr/Lyndhurst, OH), Kelly O’Connor (So/Peoria, AZ) and Jackie Walsh (Findlay, OH) teamed up in the 300 Yard Breaststroke Relay for a top finish with a time of 3:42.35.

Rounding out the gold medal count for the day in the 800 Yard Freestyle Relay was Buenano, Maggie Simpson (Fr/Hudson, OH), Emily Perkins (So/Cincinnati, OH) and Caley Miller (Fr/Fremont, OH) who clocked in at 8:43.22.

“Overall, we did a great job today,” said Head Coach Mike Gallagher, “for the first meet of the year, we showed tremendous improvement from last season.”

The Falcons dive back into competition on Friday when they host their first dual meet of the season against Hiram at 7:00pm.

Notes from the Nest...

Relay record: The 800 Freestyle Relay time of 8:43.22 goes down in the NDC record books as a program top time. The previous record of 8:48.96 was set on Nov. 30, 2006 at the College of Wooster Invitiational.

Thrice twice: At last year's Pitt-Bradford Relays, the Falcons also earned a third place finish at the meet. In addition to the third place finish, the Falcons' three gold medals matched last year's medal performance.