Psych Sheet and Full Lists of NCAAs Qualifiers / Boiler-Make-It Meet Results
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. - Purdue swimmers Kaersten Meitz and Taite Kitchel have earned the opportunity to represent the Boilermakers at the NCAA Women's Swimming & Diving Championships later this month in Indianapolis.
Meitz qualified for the third straight year, ranking among the top 25 nationally in the 200 and 500 freestyle. Kitchel earned her bid via the 200 butterfly. Meitz will also be eligible to compete in the 1,650 free. The 100 fly and 200 individual medley are optional races for Kitchel at the national championship meet.
Kitchel posted a career-best time of 1:56.54 in the 200 fly at Boiler-Make-It NCAA Last Chance meet this past Saturday at the Boilermaker Aquatic Center. That moved her into the top 40 nationally and earned her the individual bid to NCAAs. She also moved up to second place in program history, just two hundredths of a second off Emmy Rawson's program record from a year ago.
Meitz's program record of 4:37.45 in the 500 free from the Big Ten Championships ranks ninth nationally. Her career-best 200 free time of 1:44.78 on the leadoff leg of Purdue's 800 free relay on the opening night of Big Tens is 23rd nationally. The junior is also 31st in the mile (16:10.41), meaning it still would have been good enough for an individual bid to the NCAA Championships on its own.
Divers earn their NCAA berths based on their performances at the Zone Championships. Purdue annually competes at the Zone C meet, set for March 9 to 11 in Bloomington, Indiana, this year. The national championship meet invitations for the men's swimmers will be announced next week. Marat Amaltdinov locked up his bid with an NCAA automatic qualifying time while winning the 200 breaststroke at Big Tens.
To qualify for an individual event at NCAAs, a swimmer's time had to rank among the top 39 to 40 nationally, depending on the event. Once a swimmer qualifies as an individual in any one event, they are also permitted to compete in any other event in which she has an NCAA provisional time (B cut). In the case of Kitchel, she has B cuts of 53.86 in the 100 fly and 2:00.03 in the 200 IM.
Jackie Smailis (53.17) and Hanna House (54.06) also posted career-best times at the Boiler-Make-It meet, improving on their second- and fourth-fastest marks in program history. Rawson improved on her season-best time in 200 fly, but her mark of 1:56.77 ranked 42nd nationally. That left her just two spots shy of an NCAAs bid for the second year in a row.
The Purdue women have had at least one swimmer qualifier for the NCAA Championships in each of the last eight seasons. Meitz continues her pursuit of becoming a four-year NCAAs qualifier. She earned Honorable Mention All-America accolades in the 500 free at NCAAs last year.
Both the men's and women's national championship meets are being held at the IU Natatorium on the campus of IUPUI in Downtown Indianapolis this season. The women's meet is set for March 15 to 18. Meitz and Kitchel will have their first events March 16.
Third-place finish for Kaersten Meitz in the 500 Free! #BoilerUp https://t.co/tRua24wRzK
- Purdue Athletics (@PurdueSports) February 16, 2017