Inside HOKIE SPORTS | Vol. 10 No. 4 | March 2018

24 Inside Hokie Sports Performances that earned a gold medal, two silver medals and two bronze medals served to headline the accomplishments of the Virginia Tech swimming and diving teams at the ACC Swimming and Diving Championships held in late February at the Greensboro Aquatic Center in Greensboro, North Carolina. Reka Gyorgy won the lone gold medal, while Norbert Szabo and the women’s 200-yard medley relay team of Klaudia Nazieblo, Joelle Vereb, Maggie Gruber and Adriana Grabski claimed silver medals. Nazieblo claimed a bronze medal in the 200 butterfly, while Ashlynn Peters brought home a bronze in platform diving. Behind these performances, the Tech men’s team finished in sixth place with 688.5 points, while the Tech women’s team ended up in seventh place with 736 points. On the women’s side, only 50.5 points separated four teams. “I am proud of our ladies and their effort at ACCs,” Tech head coach Dr. Ned Skinner said. “Clearly, we were hoping for a higher team finish, but we just came up short in a tight cluster between fourth through seventh. We gave it all we had on the boards and in the pool.” Gyorgy, a sophomore from Ullo, Hungary, came in first in the 400- yard individual medley for the second consecutive year. She swam the event in a time of 4 minutes, 4.42 seconds, breaking her own school record by more than two seconds and notching the sixth-fastest time in the nation this season. Peters, a junior from Cypress, Texas, was the ACC’s Most Valuable Diver of the women’s championships. She won a bronze medal in the platform event by finishing with 239.25 points, while recording fifth- place finishes in both the 1- and 3-meter events. She was the only female diver to qualify for the finals in all three events. The Tech women also pocketed a silver medal and another bronze. The 200-yard medley relay team of Nazieblo, Vereb, Gruber and Grabski came in second with a time of 1:36.35, while also setting a school record. Nazieblo, a senior from Wroclaw, Poland, claimed the bronze medal in the 200 butterfly, swimming the event in a time of 1:55.01. She also registered a fifth-place finish in the 100 backstroke, swimming that event in a time of 52.56 seconds. In addition, Nazieblo was part of the 800-yard freestyle relay team of Gyorgy, Grabski, and Chloe Hicks that came in fifth with a time of 7:07.49. The 400-yard freestyle relay team of Grabski, Vereb, Danielle Griggs and Gyorgy came in fifth as well, setting a school record with a time of 3:15. “It appears four relays will swim at the NCAAs, and improving relays was a big goal of ours,” Skinner said. “Including breaking one of our oldest school records in the 400 free relay to end the meet. We will look forward to building on this as a program and for our march to the NCAAs next month.” Other notable individual performances came from Gruber, who finished sixth in the 100 butterfly with a time of 52.64 seconds, and Vereb, who came in fifth in the 100 breaststroke with a time of 1:00.49. On the men’s side, Szabo claimed the only medal with his second- place finish in the 200 IM. The junior from Budapest, Hungary swam the event in a time of 1:42.70, which marked the second-fastest time in the event in school history. Szabo also scored points in the 200 freestyle and 200 butterfly events. He came in fifth in the 200 freestyle in a time of 1:35.06 and 13th in the 200 butterfly in a time of 1:44.62. “Even though the final scores show we did not meet our team goal, we sure did go out and perform well with all we had,” Skinner said. “The men stood by each other… and we took away many positives. The Hokies had so many awesome performances.” Lane Stone, a freshman from Springfield, Virginia, set two school records and scored points in three events. His time of 4;16.80 in the 500- yard freestyle set a school mark by nearly two seconds and enabled him to finish 11th, while he came in eighth in the 1,650 freestyle in a school- record time of 14:55.50. He also finished seventh in the 200 freestyle. The Tech men’s team also got top-10 performances from Ian Ho and Michael Craddock. Ho came in fifth in the 50 freestyle with a time of 19.34 seconds, setting a school record that had stood for 10 years. Craddock wound up ninth in the 1,650 freestyle with a time of 15:03.76. In addition, the Tech men received three top-eight performances from their relay teams. The 800-yard freestyle relay team of Stone, Szabo, Harrison Pierce and Hassler Carroll finished fourth, while the 200 freestyle relay team of Ho, David Herbert, Pierce and Thomas Hallock wound up fifth after swimming the fifth-fastest time in school history. The 200-yard medley relay team of Jake Lamparella, Hallock, Pierce and Ho was eighth. Like the women’s team, the Tech men’s squad received solid performances from its divers, who scored 179 points themselves. That total was the third-most of the divers on ACC men’s teams behind Duke (212) and Florida State (195). Thomas Shinholser finished in the top 11 of all three diving disciplines, led by his fifth-place finish in the platform event, where he scored 317 points. Shinholser also registered a ninth-place finish in the 1-meter event, and he came in 11th in the 3-meter event. Ben Schiesl finished in the top 12 of each discipline. He recorded seventh-place finishes in the platform and 1-meter events, while coming in 12th in the 3-meter event. Now, athletes from both of Tech’s squads await possible NCAA competition. TheNCAAWomen’s Swimming andDiving Championships will be held March 14-17 in Columbus, Ohio, while the NCAA Men’s Swimming and Diving Championships will be held March 21-24 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Reka Gyorgy, Ashlynn Peters and Klaudia Nazieblo won individual medals on the women’s side, while Norbert Szabo brought home a silver medal for the men by Jimmy Robertson TECH MEN COME IN SIXTH, WOMEN SEVENTH AT ACC Swimming and Diving CHAMPIONSHIPS Reka Gyorgy