ATHENS, Ga. (TheCCSA.com) –Florida Gulf Coast University and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County are currently leading after the first day of  the 2015 Coastal Collegiate Swimming Association (CCSA) Swimming and Diving Championship on Wednesday at the University of Georgia’s Gabrielson Natatorium. 

UMBC Men’s 800-yard medley relay team of Gregor Spoerlein, Nikola Trajkovic, Robert Breen and Jonas Gutzat  took the first win of these championships with a time of 6:30.65. Incarnate Word (Mehdi El Hazzas, Connor Hennessy, Aaron Moran and Oleksii Morgun) finished in second-place with a time of 6:33.22, and Gardner-Webb (Nathan Lile, Cameron Pou, Hal McKay and Nicholas Dyer) was third, posting a time of 6:40.11.

In the Women’s 200-yard medley relay, the Florida Gulf Coast team of Kira Toussaint, Katie Armitage, Emma Svensson and Becky Derogatis broke the meet and Conference record touching in 1:37.17.  Liberty (Kendall Hough, Prudence Rooker, Kendall Hart and Meghan Babcock) placed second with a time of 1:39.73, while Gardner-Webb (Lili Toth, Charity Byrum, Mary O’Doherty and Kelsey Williams) took third-place with a time of 1:40.96.

Gardner-Webb Men’s 200-yard relay team of Connor Bos, Brandon Searle, Tyler Gomez and Nathan Lile took the title with a time of 1:28.81. UMBC (Lauri Kaei, Leo Endres, Andrew Schrantz and Trevor Doll) placed second with a time of 1:29.39, while Howard University (Benjamin Skelding, Dexter Brown, Jared Miller and Popovich Trent) took third-place with a time of 1:35.22.

The final event of the evening, Women’s 800-yard freestyle relay, was taken by FGCU (Kira Toussaint, Katie Armitage, Lanie Cabrera and Nina Schiffer) touching in 7:16.90. Liberty (Cori Gary, Rachel Wasko, Chelsea Pond and Emily Duffy) placed second with a time of 7:21.10, with Georgia Southern University (Kylee Parsons, Madison Lichtefeld, Kaylyn Thomas and Amber Cortazzo) finished third with a time of 7:26.65.

The first diving final of the evening saw the University of Incarnate Word take the Women’s 3-meter title with Kali Lents scoring 304.60 points. Cayla Collins of FGCU took second with 277.05 points and University of Incarnate Word’s Kim Foster took third with 255.65 points.

Following the first night of competition, UMBC tops the Men’s standings with 74 points. Gardner-Webb sits in second with 72 points and New Jersey Institute of Technology is third with 60 points. Virginia Military Institute is fourth with 56 points, while Incarnate Word is in fifth with 34 points. Howard University rounds out the top six with 32 points.

In the Women’s standings, FGCU leads with 205 points, followed by Incarnate Word (187) and GSU (146) rounding out the top three. Liberty sits in fourth with 112 points, while Gardner-Webb (106), VMI (95) and UNC-Asheville (92) are currently fifth, sixth and seventh respectively. The University of North Florida (88), North Carolina A&T (74) and Howard University (34) round out the field.

The second day of the CCSA Championship will begin Thursday, Feb. 19 at 10:00am, starting with the 500-yard freestyle preliminaries.  The event finals for day two will start at 6:00pm.