Finishing First By One

Wednesday, February 10

Grand Junction, Colo.

10:00 AM

California Baptist University

RMAC Championships

2/13/2016 8:14:00 PM | Men's Swimming and Diving, Swimming and Diving

By: Andrew Shortall, Asst. Sports Information Director

RESULTS

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. – With first through third place decided by a matter of points, California Baptist University needed to rally in the last two events of the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference Championships to finish as high as possible.

It all started with Zach Parry winning the 3-meter diving board. Then, not only did CBU win the championship race in the 400-yard freestyle relay, but the consolation heat, as well.

"Going into it, I just went up to the guys and told them we have to step it in diving and win these two relays," Coach Rick Rowland said. "I told them we could win this meet by one point and we did.

"It's a pretty exciting ending, it doesn't get much better than that."

Those 78 points gave the Lancers 916 in all on the week to secure their first-ever conference championship by the narrowest of margins over host Colorado Mesa (915). Not only that, CBU likely shocked the NCAA Division II world by upending the second-ranked team in D-II, Lindenwood (908). It also stretched the Lancers' undefeated streak into the postseason, as they have come out victorious in the first 11 events of 2015-16 where team scores were kept.

The day was made even sweeter, as the CBU women won their third-straight RMAC championship by more than 40 points. For the first time since joining the conference in 2013-14, the Lancers swept both conference titles.

"We have a lot of excited kids, we have never won a double title on the men and women ever, not even in the PCSC," Rowland said.

Rick Rowland was also named the Coach of the Year. Parry was named the Diver of the Meet and Josh Hanson the Swimmer of the Year after each dazzled at this week. Parry won both boards, while Hanson won five conference titles and produced his fair share of records.

Alexis Ohmar rallied CBU's championship 400-free relay team with a 44.38-second anchor leg, which distanced the Lancers from the Lions and Mavericks. Josh Hanson, Bernardo Gonzalez Valentim and Brent Teraoka also swam under 45.27 on their legs to deliver the win in 2:58.88 over CMU (3:00.10).

Tanner Shore, Drew Denton, Jim Bossert and Elijah Barrows delivered an even-closer win in the B final. The quartet won the heat in 3:04.70 and LWU touched just .03 of a second later.

Hanson won his fifth conference championship of the week with a time of 1:45.81 in the 200 back, while James Wilson took sixth in the race (1:54.53).

CBU made case for just how deep it is with three top-six finishers in the 1650 free and 100 free. Robert Griffith (15:40.44) and Elijah Barrows (15:51.25) went two-three in the 1650 free, with Griffith picking up an automatic-qualifying time of the NCAA Division II Championships. The race ended with Josh Fleutsch forsaking his seed going in to finish sixth (16:23).

Ohmar notched second in the 100 with a new school-record time of 44.70, while Valentim (45.66) and Teraoka (45.91) were not far off in fourth and sixth, respectively.

"We did everything we needed to do today," Rowland said. "We needed to win both A and B relays and we did and our divers stepped up. We had a lot of swimmers get up and place higher than their seeds, too. With one point, you can point to every single guy and say without them we couldn't have done this."