2026 RMAC Championship: Day 1-2 Recap

By: Ricky Baptist, Sports Information Director

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. (February 11, 2026) – UT Permian Basin swimming began the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Championships with a school-record swim within the males’s 800 freestyle relay on Tuesday evening, and that sturdy begin continued with two extra information within the girls’s 200 medley relay and the lads’s 200 medley relay to cap off the motion on Wednesday evening. Through two days of competitors, the UTPB males’s group is fifth out of six groups whereas the Falcon girls are eighth out of 9.

The 800 freestyle relay was the one occasion of the primary day (Tuesday) of the five-day championship meet. The UTPB girls’s “A” relay (Ava McCormack, Erika Hajduk, Mackenzie Gingerich, Nadia Phelps) completed eighth at 8:11.28.

The spotlight of opening evening was the lads’s 800 freestyle relay, which noticed the UTPB “A” group (Sean Greene, Nico Turner, Owen Putnam, Niklas Heelein) end fifth general with a time of 6:45.38 (altitude transformed time of 6:40.58), destroying the earlier UTPB college document of 6:48.60 set in 2018. The Falcons had been simply 1.83 seconds from overtaking Oklahoma Christian University for fourth place.

UTPB then went into Wednesday, the primary full day of competitors, eyeing extra information.

Ending the night was the second relay of the meet. In the ladies’s 200 medley relay, the UTPB “A” relay (McCormack, Avery Momotiuk, Rowan McWhorter, Gingerich) was seventh with a time of 1:47.30, marking a two-spot enchancment and an over-eight-second lower in time from final 12 months’s squad. It was the primary girls’s swim document to be damaged by the Falcons in two years underneath Head Coach Brian Schroeder, surpassing the earlier document of 1:48.32 set in 2020.

Both of UTPB’s girls’s “A” relays throughout the first two days of the meet featured three freshmen. The Falcon girls will even get additional factors this 12 months for having a “B” relay group, one thing they didn’t have a 12 months in the past.

To end day two, the lads’s 200 medley relay additionally noticed a document because the UTPB “A” group (Turner, Chase Alderman, Colin Doyle, Logan Fultz) completed fifth general, matching the end of the 800 freestyle relay group on Tuesday, and doing so with a time of 1:30.29. The Falcons simply missed out of third place by .05 seconds. The earlier college document was 1:31.09 set in 2019.

“We came out and raced really well this week, especially in the relays,” mentioned Coach Schroeder. “We also had a lot of personal bests individually. On top of breaking the school record, the men’s 200 medley relay got fifth place, and almost got third place on top of that after the third- and fourth-place teams tied, which would have been huge for us to get third place in anything at this meet. They had a really great swim.”

In the primary race of Wednesday morning, McWhorter completed fifteenth within the prelims of the ladies’s 200 IM with a time of two:09.75 after which completed sixteenth within the B Final with a time of two:12.19. McWhorter’s end garnered 11 factors and vaulted the Falcons previous the University of Nebraska Kearney for seventh place (43-36) on the time.

In the lads’s 200 IM prelims, Alderman (1:54.90, tenth), Greene (1:54.92, eleventh), Putnam (1:55.37, thirteenth) and Heelein (1:56.63, fifteenth) all certified for the B Final. Peyton Beard (1:59.88) was the second alternate in 18th place. Then within the finals, it was Greene incomes the win within the B Final (ninth general) with a time of 1:53.20. He was adopted by Putnam (1:54.21), Heelein (1:55.16) and Alderman (1:55.18) so as in twelfth, thirteenth and 14th place, respectively.

UTPB’s high performer within the girls’s 50 freestyle prelims was Gingerich (25.01) in twenty seventh. In the lads’s 50 freestyle prelims, Doyle (20.83; tenth), Fultz (20.85, eleventh) and Brannan Espericueta (21.15, sixteenth) all certified for the B Final. Kell Frazier (21.16) was the primary alternate in seventeenth place. In the finals, Doyle (20.80) was eleventh, Fultz (21.05) was fifteenth and Espericueta (21.11) was sixteenth.

In the ultimate occasion of the morning session, Phelps was twenty fifth within the girls’s 1000 freestyle with a time of 11:39.75.

Lastly, swimming in a time trial on the finish of the day on Wednesday, Cooper Workman swam within the 200 backstroke and broke his personal college document set at this 12 months’s midseason meet. Workman swam a time of 1:49.94 (altitude adjusted time of 1:48.74), breaking his earlier document time by nearly a second and a half. At the Tiger Invitational earlier this season, Workman’s prelims time of 1:50.19 (Nov. 23) broke UTPB’s document of 1:50.92 set in 2010 by Joseph Sarradet.

Through two days, The UTPB males (104 factors) lead sixth-place Adams State University (58 factors) by 46 factors and path fourth-place Simon Frazier University (130 factors) by 26 factors. The Falcons’ males’s group has scored 47 extra factors by two days on the RMAC Championship than it did a 12 months in the past.

The UTPB girls (77 factors) lead ninth-place Adams State (49 factors) by 9 factors and path seventh-place Nebraska Kearney (96 factors) by 19 factors.

 

Men’s A Finalists: (Top-8):

800 freestyle relay – fifth place – UTPB “A” group (Sean Greene, Nico Turner, Owen Putnam, Niklas Heelein) – 6:45.38

200 medley relay – fifth place – UTPB “A” group (Nico Turner, Chase Alderman, Colin Doyle, Logan Fultz) – 1:30.29

 

Men’s B Finalists: (Top-16):

800 freestyle relay – thirteenth place – UTPB “B” group (Zane Garner, Cooper Workman, Logan Fultz, Chase Alderman) – 7:02.20

200 IM – ninth place – Sean Greene – 1:53.20

200 IM – twelfth place – Owen Putnam – 1:54.21

200 IM – thirteenth place – Niklas Heelein – 1:55.16

200 IM – 14th place – Chase Alderman – 1:55.18

50 freestyle – eleventh place – Colin Doyle – 20.80

50 freestyle – fifteenth place – Logan Fultz – 21.05

50 freestyle – sixteenth place – Brannan Espericueta – 21.11

200 medley relay – twelfth place – UTPB “B” group (Zane Garner, Brannan Espericueta, Tommy Betancour, Kell Frazier) – 1:32.12

Women’s A Finalists: (Top-8):

800 freestyle relay – eighth place – UTPB “A” group (Ava McCormack, Erika Hajduk, Mackenzie Gingerich, Nadia Phelps) – 8:11.28

200 medley relay – seventh place – UTPB “A” group (Ava McCormack, Avery Momotiuk, Rowan McWhorter, Mackenzie Gingerich) – 1:47.30

 

Women’s B Finalists: (Top-16):

800 freestyle relay – sixteenth place – UTPB “B” group (Alondra Ortiz, Sarahie Barcenas, Lu-Lu Van Winkle, Gia Delgado) – 8:59.06

200 IM – sixteenth place – Rowan McWhorter – 2:12.19

200 medley relay – sixteenth place – UTPB “B” group (Gia Delgado, Sarahie Barcenas, Nadia Phelps, Alondra Ortiz) – 2:00.08

 

Next up: UT Permian Basin is again for day three of the 2026 RMAC Championship on Thursday, February 12. Preliminaries begin at 10 a.m. Mountain Time with finals at 5:30 p.m. Mountain Time. Day three of the convention meet with function the 100 butterfly, 400 IM, 200 freestyle, girls’s 3-meter diving and the 400 medley relay.