WHITTIER, Calif. — Rachel Fox won the women's 500 yard freestyle and Daniel Carpenter too the men's 100 freestyle to lead the University of La Verne swimming and diving teams against Whittier and Claremont-Mudd-Scripps.
Fox led wire-to-wire in the 500 and posted the best in-season time of 5:29.34. Two other Leopards saw significant improvements in the event. Ashley MacAskill slashed more than eight seconds off her previous mark with a 5:41.62 and Delaney Poe cut three seconds, posting a time of 6:01.73.
Men's 500 freestyle lineup saw major improvements as well. Brandon Pon, last year's SCIAC bronze medalist in the event, took second with a time of 4:57.41 cutting two seconds off his previous best mark of 4:59.48. Kris Grigorian dropped from 5:25.59 to 5:22.27 to finish sixth.
Daniel Carpenter came from behind to touch the wall at 47.97 in the 100 free and edged CMS' Jacob Bain by three-one hundredth of a second. He also posted the fastest split of any team in the 4x100 freestyle relay with a 46.95 as La Verne's anchor. La Verne finished fourth in the relay behind three teams from CMS.
Freshman diver Andrew Tompkins competed in his first meet as a Leopard and made a big splash. The San Diego native posted a total score of 253.80 in a six-dive program on the one-meter board to break Jacob Tittl's mark of 252.95 set in 2014.
"We had some great performances today," La Verne coach Pat Skehan said. "The team saw such huge improvements in race strategy and technique. ... With all the improvement this week, I am really looking forward to the Winter Invitational."
Women's competition notables
Rachel Fox added a second-place finish in the 200 freestyle with a time of 2:04.45.
Mary Hanna claimed two third-place finishes in backstroke events. The junior went 1:02.82 in the 100 and posted a time of 2:15.29 in the 200.
Men's competition notables
Carpenter took third in the 200 freestyle, coming up half a second shy.
Pon touched second in the 1000 freestyle with a time of 10:21.15.
Harry Bennett posted top-five finishes in the breaststroke events. He finished fifth in the 100 with a time of 1:02.50 and was fourth in the 200 with a time of 2:18.21.
Up next
The Leopards will take one week off from competition and will return on Dec. 2-4 as they host the annual Collegiate Winter Invitational at East Los Angeles College.
