Kansas speeds through first day of the Big 12 Championship

Results Day One Results (.PDF)

AUSTIN, Texas – Kansas swimming and diving sits in second after two relays on the Big 12 Championship’s first day in Austin, Texas. The Jamail Swimming Center was home to two second-place finishes by Kansas relay teams in the 200-yard medley and 800-yard freestyle relays.
 
Following up the program’s best-ever Big 12 Championship finish a year ago, the Jayhawks certainly showed they were ready to perform even better this year. KU registered the second-fastest times in program history in both of the night’s events, starting with a blistering 1:40.03 200-yard medley relay swim by a Kansas Relay ‘A’ squad comprising of Yulduz Kuchkarova, Haley Downey, Pia Pavlic and Carly Straight. The time trailed only the school record of 1:38.45 set at the 2009 Big 12 Championship.
 KU placed second in the 800-yard freestyle relay.
The fast start by the 200-yard medley relay squad was maintained by the Kansas ‘A’ 800-yard freestyle relay team. Haley Bishop, Jenny Nusbaum, Sammie Schurig and Madison Straight recorded a time of 7:14.81, a little under three seconds slower than the program record set in the 2014 Big 12 Championship. The blazing relay was aided by Haley Bishop’s first 200 yards, recording an opening leg of 1:48.23, setting a new lifetime record for the sophomore in the 200-yard freestyle.

Kansas head coach Clark Campbell was ecstatic with opening stanza of the four-day championship meet. He believed the first day relays, combined with a promising time trial session earlier Wednesday morning, set the tone for the team to continue challenging the Kansas record books through the rest of the meet.
 
“It was a real good first day for us,” Campbell said. “We started really well in the time trial meet (this morning). We caught a little fire and had a lot of season-best times and a couple of lifetime-best times. We went into tonight with a little bit of momentum and just kept rolling. It was about as good a start as we can hope for.”
 
KU’s performance netted them 68 points, trailing only Texas’ 80. The Jayhawks are followed by third-place Iowa State (64) and TCU (58) and West Virginia (58), who are tied for fourth. The Big 12 Championship will continue with preliminaries at 10 a.m. on Thursday morning. The day’s action will conclude with a finals session that will start at 6 p.m.
 
The Jayhawks will look to continue their fast times in the relays on Thursday with the 400 medley relay in addition to starting the meet’s individual events. Thursday’s individual races will include the 500-yard freestyle, 200-yard individual medley and 50-yard freestyle. Kansas divers will see their first action of the meet with the one-meter dive.
 
“We’ve been training well, I’ve been happy with what we’ve done in the last week or two of practice,” Kansas diving coach Gabe Downey said. “We have the three-meter on Friday and (five-meter platform) on Saturday, and we think we’ll only get better as we go higher. This will be a good start, but we’ll look forward to the rest.”
 
FloSports will continue to live stream all of the preliminary and final events. Swimming and diving fans can also follow the stats live through the Big 12’s Swimming and Diving Championship website.
 
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