Swimming & Diving Return To The Pool For ECAC Championships

FAIRFIELD, Conn. – Fresh off sweeping the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference (MAAC) swimming and diving championships, the Fairfield University applications will head to Pennsylvania for his or her final staff occasion of the 2025-26 season. The Stags will take part within the 2026 ECAC Open Championship which runs from Friday, February 27 by way of Sunday, March 1

Fairfield positioned its mark in MAAC historical past by successful each the boys’s and ladies’s swimming and diving championships, the fifth title for the ladies and the primary crown for the boys. The ladies captured its title by edging Marist University by a margin of 10 factors.

“The MAAC championship was a total team effort, and I’m unbelievably proud of both programs,” Head Coach Jake Lichter mentioned. “For out women to capture a fifth MAAC title in eight years and to do it in a meet that came down to the final relay is truly a storybook ending. The team never stopped fighting after sitting in fourth place and trailing Marist by nearly 100 points at the end of the second day.

The men also beat out Marist in capturing the championship, but the team managed a more comfortable margin of 65 points.

“To see our males breakthrough for his or her first MAAC championship is simply unbelievable,” Coach Lichter continued. “While it was a complete staff effort, that win was due largely to our relentless male divers, who pushed us excessive on the ultimate day assist us safe the title earlier than the final relay. This staff has been constructing towards this second for 2 years, shopping for into the tradition, difficult each other on daily basis, and believing they might make historical past. Now they’ve.”

The divers certainly showed their mettle in the 1-meter event, taking three of the top eight spots. Andrew Cataldo surged with his final dive to take silver by netting 262.25 points. Cameron Pope finished fifth based on his score of 212.40 while Tyler Robie brought home team points from the eighth position with his 198.40 points.

While the men’s divers clinched the title by combining for 75 team points, the women’s 400 free relay posted the deciding points with its second-place finish with a time of 3:25.10, one spot ahead of Marist by .16 seconds.

“I’m extremely grateful to our 400 free relay of freshman Natasha De Pree, graduate pupil Allie Bashor, sophomore Sofia Smerechniak, and senior captain Holly Rahurahu for having the braveness, perception, and willpower to step up and clinch the victory in such a high-pressure second,” Lichter mentioned.

In addition to their efficiency within the 400 free relay, members of the foursome additionally put their stamp on the championship in different methods. De Pree ended up successful the MAAC Rookie of the Meet award for her performances within the four-day occasion. Bashor captured gold within the 100 butterfly whereas Smerechniak was a bronze medalist within the 1650 freestyle.

Now, the staff will go up in opposition to a few of the area’s prime swimming and diving applications on the ECAC Championships. The occasion, which shall be hosted by Bucknell University, will embody 24 applications, a few of which the Stags have confronted in the course of the 2025-26 season. Fairfield shall be certainly one of six applications that shall be all in with each swimming and each diving groups competing within the occasion.

The Championship begins on Friday with the ladies’s 3-meter diving occasion as Lillian Tonole and Jade Leblic representing the Stags. The Stags can have student-athletes in 35 of the 40 occasions to be determined over the 4 days of competitors. The males’s staff can have 19 student-athletes competing whereas the ladies’s staff can have 18 student-athletes on the occasion.

The Stags will look to enhance on final 12 months’s placements on the ECAC Championships with the boys’s staff taking fifth general with scoring 229 factors whereas the ladies’s squad putting sixth general with its 214 staff factors.