GENEVA, Ohio—Villanova sits atop the women's team standings after winning the 800 yard freestyle relay and tying for the title in the 200 yard medley relay on the first night of the BIG EAST Championships at the SPIRE Institute on Wednesday evening. The team's latest gold medal in the 800 free relay and the result of the 200 medley relay give the Wildcats a team total of 77 points going into a full day of competition on Thursday.
This is the eighth consecutive year that Villanova has won the 800 freestyle relay. The lineup of senior
Milly Routledge (North Ascot, UK), junior
Abbey Berloco (Cranbury, N.J.), junior
Nicole Welch (Beverly, Mass.) and junior
Kelly Montesi (Greenwich, Conn.) recorded a winning time of 7:19.35 and finished just over three seconds ahead of runner-up Connecticut (7:22.40) and the rest of the six-team field.
Routledge has been a member of the Wildcats champion 800 free relay squad all four years of her collegiate career. Villanova's lineup for Wednesday's race had three of the four team members who swam on the relay last year, when Welch swam the second leg and was followed by Routledge and Montesi in the second half of the lineup. Wednesday's race came down to a huge effort by Montesi on the anchor leg, as she beat the Huskies anchor by 5.5 seconds over the final 200 yards. Connecticut and Xavier were swimming first and second following the first three legs of the race before the big comeback by Montesi gave the Wildcats the win.
The night got off to an eventful start as Villanova and Xavier each recorded a time of 1:41.74 in the 200 medley relay. Routledge led off the race and was followed by senior
Rayann Jaryszak (Arlington, Texas), Montesi and sophomore
Perri Stahl (La Grange, Ill.) in the Wildcats lineup. Xavier made up four-tenths of a second on the anchor leg of the relay to pull even with Villanova, while the teams came in just two-tenths of a second in front of third place Connecticut in an exciting race to the wall.
Routledge swam the backstroke leg of the relay with a split of 26.33, Jaryszak recorded a split of 28.24 on the breaststroke leg and Montesi swam the butterfly leg in 24.24 before Stahl posted a split of 22.93 on the freestyle anchor leg. The Wildcats also won the 200 medley relay last year with Montesi (backstroke), Jaryszak (breaststroke) and Routledge (freestyle) all in the lineup.
The 77 team points for Villanova on Wednesday lead Xavier (69), Connecticut (66), Seton Hall (60), Providence (56) and Butler (52) in the team standings.
On the schedule for Thursday are the 500 yard freestyle, the 200 yard individual medley, the 50 yard freestyle, women's one-meter diving and the 200 yard freestyle relay. Preliminaries begin at 10 a.m. and are followed by finals starting at 6 p.m.
