Swimming & Diving Ready for AAC Championship in Dallas

Wednesday, February 14

Dallas, Texas

ALL DAY

Tulane University

Day 1

Swimming & Diving Ready for AAC Championship in Dallas

Feb 12, 2018 | Women's Swimming and Diving

Day 1 Video | Live Results | Championship Central

NEW ORLEANS – The Tulane women's swimming and diving team will have its shot at a conference championship this week, traveling to Dallas to take on the American Athletic Conference Championship.

The meet, which lasts for four days (February 14-17) will be streamed live for free through the AAC's website. Live results will also be available through the AAC.

Last season, the Green Wave came in sixth place at the championship but set many new school records. Shelly Zelnick set the record in the 200 back with a time of 1:57.42, Olivia Johnson had the Tulane record in the 200 breast (since surpassed) in 2:16.60, Morgan Tacik broke the school record in the 500 free with a time of 4:49.36, Zelnick had another school record in the 200 IM with a time of 2:00.84 and Johnson shattered the school 400 IM record by seven seconds with a time of 4:12.79.

The quartet of Zelnick, Emma Lincoln, Ellie Sills (since graduated) and Morgan Tacik also had a school record in the 800 free relay.

As a team, Tulane has seen tremendous improvement since then. Tulane has set three different school records this year, defeated SMU in a dual meet in the fall, posted its best-ever score against LSU to open the season and improved three places in the Phill Hansel Invitational from sixth to third.

"The excitement on the team and the energy on deck at practices has been hard to contain right now," Coach Katie Robinson said. "It's been fun to see the team swimming well and posting great times in practice. They give every reason to believe we're going to have a phenomenal meet coming up."

The Green Wave has also won five more dual meets than it did last year, defeating Loyola-New Orleans twice and SMU, West Florida and FIU once each. The team has three new school records this year as well with Paris Zhang swimming a 54.01 in the 100 back, Kate McDonald swimming a 2:14.82 in the 200 breast and Barker, Zelnick, Zhang and Kaitlin Simpson had the school record in the 200 free relay of 1:31.83.

Zhang had a great individual honor as well this year, winning the AAC Swimmer of the Week award in late January.

The Green Wave swimmers have also posted five NCAA B times so far this year: Zhang in the 100 back, Zelnick in the 200 back and 200 IM, McDonald in the 200 breast and Olivia Johnson in the 400 IM.

"This has been a year of growth in a lot of ways," Robinson said. "We came out swinging at the start of the season, and the majority of that is coming from the team cohesiveness that we have right now. We've seen the results of that already, and it's just snowballing into this great performance we're about to have at conference."

Action in Dallas begins with the 3-meter diving preliminaries on Wednesday at 11 a.m. The 200 medley relay and 3-meter diving finals will be held in the 5 p.m. session on Wednesday.

Thursday will see more diving prelims with the 1-meter springboard in the afternoon. Swimming prelims in the 500 free, 200 IM and 50 free will be held at 10 a.m., and finals of those swims will take place at 6 p.m. as will the 200 free relay.

On Friday, swimming prelims again start at 10 a.m. with the 400 IM, 100 fly, 200 free, 100 breast and 100 back having their turns. Finals will be held at 6 p.m. along with the 400 medley relay.

To close things out on Saturday, the platform diving prelims will be held starting at 1 p.m. Swimming prelims in the 1,650 free, 200 back, 100 free, 200 breast and 200 fly will start at 10 a.m. In the evening, finals in those swims, the platform dives and the 400 free relay will end the championships.