Rice Women Win Third Straight CSCAA Open Water Title
The Rice women’s team won the College Swimming and Diving Coaches Association of America Open Water Championships Saturday, their third straight title.
Grand Valley State won the men’s title at the meet in Sarasota, Fla.
Rice has owned the young event, winning the title in 2022, 2024 and now this year. (The 2023 meet was canceled due to inclement weather.)
Ella Dyson won her third straight individual title in the meet. Dyson finished first with a time of 56 minutes, 5.7 seconds. Second was teammate Ava Portello in 57:46.7. Ava Hamblett was 10th in 59:18.0. The Owls combined time of the top three scoring finishers was 2:53:10.
Villanova challenged for the title with three finishers in the top 12, all breaking an hour in the 5-kilometer race. Marlene Blanke was third in 58:31.1. Teammate Riley Hull was sixth. Their time was 3 minutes, 22 seconds behind Rice.
Fourth place went to Katharina Hibbeln of Tampa in 58:36.3. Casey Stephens of Miami was fifth. Cincinnati had a pair of top-10 finishers with Libby Michel seventh and Taira Vroom ninth.
The men’s side was much even more balanced, the team race decided by just nine seconds. Grand Valley State’s three finishers tallied a time of 2:42:12, with Lynn University second in 2:42:21.
Lynn’s Mevlut Efe Guler won the overall title in 52:54.1, his time nearly 3.5 minutes ahead of his nearest teammate.
GVSU placed four finishers in the top 17 spots. Berk Boz was sixth in 53:22.7. Raul Briceno followed in 53:29.4. Anton Zeno Rauch was 10th, with Evan Fox 17th.
Behind Guler was Michigan’s Joshua Brown, who went 52:55.6, the only Wolverine in the race. Third place went to Matt Cinque of Boston College, who went 52:56.0. Tampa’s Jacob Hamlin finished fourth in 52:57.5, with a gap of nearly 20 seconds back to Parker Sterlitz of West Virginia.
Miami’s Elif Rolfsen was seventh, followed by Thomas Langlois of Whittier College.
