March 21, 2003
AUBURN, Ala. - Purdue senior Lindsay Lange earned two more honorable mention All-America citations Friday night at the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships. Lange placed 10th in the 100 breaststroke and helped guide the 200 medley relay team to a 14th place showing.
The All-America citation was Lange's third in three years competing in the 100 breast; she also took home honorable mention honors at the 2001 and 2002 championships.
Stanford's Tara Kirk scorched the competition in the 100 breast, finishing with a NCAA meet record time of 58.62. Her nearest competitor, Auburn's Maggie Bowen, finished more than a second behind the Cardinal phenom. Kirk also holds the NCAA record of 58.41, which she recorded earlier this season.
Lange's finals time was a respectable 1:01.07; her preliminary time was slightly faster at 1:01.03.
"The team and I are very proud of Lindsay, she has done just an outstanding job" said Purdue head coach Cathy Wright-Eger. "I don't think Lindsay has raced this hard in her career. With two straight days of morning and evening relay sessions followed by the individual races, I found it incredible that she was still capable of posting her fastest NCAA championship time in the 100 breaststroke."
Purdue's 200 medley relay squad became the third Boilermaker relay team of the 2003 NCAA Championships to earn honorable mention All-America honors, after the senior quartet of Lisa Dolansky, Lange, Patricia Finnerty and Kim Paradeise posted a 14th place time of 1:41.29. On Friday, Purdue's 200 free relay squad earned a 14th place showing of 1:32.63 seconds and the 400 medley quartet posted a season-best mark of 3:41.29, which placed it 15th.
Dolansky, Lange, Finnerty and Paradeise also received honorable mention All-America citations for the 200 medley at last year's championship meet. Purdue's success at the NCAA's was built on the shoulders of the 1987 200 medley relay team of Karen Schmidt, Cassie Stein, Kendra Hensler and Cathy Ackerman, which earned the women's swimming program's first ever honorable mention All-America citation.
After 12 of 21 events Purdue was tied for 21st with South Carolina with 23 points. If the Boilermakers should hold onto this spot it would be their highest team finish ever. The school's previous best finish was 22nd, which it recorded in 1992.
"Our goal going into this tournament was to finish among the top 25, but we're going to have to fight even harder to stay where we are at in the standings," said Wright-Eger. "If our relay team can score us a few more points tomorrow we could finish higher, but it's going to be very tough since the diving scores account for so much."
Host Auburn continued to build on its overall lead throughout the day, and led second place Georgia by more than 100 points through 12 races.
In preliminary races from Friday morning, Finnerty scored a time of 55.27 in the 100 butterfly and Dolansky posted a mark of 56.02 in the 100 backstroke.
The Boilermakers will compete in five events Saturday, including the 400 free relay (Dolansky, Lange, Tracy Duchac and Paradeise), 200 butterfly (Finnerty), 200 breaststroke (Lange), 200 back (Dolansky) and 100 free (Paradeise).
Swimming preliminaries begin each day at 11:00 a.m., and are followed by the diving preliminaries at 1:00 p.m. Finals for both swimming and diving begin every night at 7:00 p.m. Results from the NCAA Championships are posted shortly after the end of each event on the Auburn University web site, www.auburntigers.com.