March 20, 2009

Results

COLLEGE STATION, Texas - Senior Lauren Beaudreau broke another one of her own school records Friday by finishing 17th overall in the 400 IM on Day Two of the NCAA Swimming & Diving National Championship at Texas A&M University.

Beaudreau raced to the finish in the preliminaries in a time of 4:10.53, which set the school record by just over a second. More importantly, it put the senior in position for a top-16 time and a berth in the finals.

"She is putting together a very memorable weekend," said head coach Matt Barany. "She is as focused as I've ever seen. I feel honored to be here with a courageous swimmer like Lauren representing Richmond in a sea of Pac-10, SEC and ACC schools. This is an important moment for our program."

But when the dust settled in the prelim heats, Beaudreau's time had narrowly missed a top-16 spot by .69 seconds.

The senior was one of just three swimmers in the event's top 30 from outside a Bowl Championship Subdivision (BCS) school -- Princeton's Alicia Aemisegger was fourth in the 400 IM (4:02.47) and UNLV's Zsuzsanna Jakobos was eighth (4:07.58).

Making her third career appearance at the National Championship event, the Lafayette, Calif. native is lone women's swimmer from the A-10 at the 2009 event.

Beaudreau will conclude her meet on Saturday with the 200 breast, an event she's seeded 27th out of 53 swimmers.

Stay tuned to RichmondSpiders.com for complete details on Saturday. You can also follow Head Coach Barany's blog from the Championship at the official website of The Collegian.