Milwaukee's Emily McClellan Set For NCAA Championships
Following a tremendously successful Horizon League Championships weekend, Emily McClellan of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee women's swimming team heads to Auburn, Ala. this week in pursuit of an NCAA Championship. The NCAA Women's Swimming and Diving Championships kick off Thursday, March 15 and the three-day meet wraps up Saturday, March 17.
McClellan posted NCAA A-cut times in winning both the 100 and 200 breaststroke at the league meet to earn an automatic bid into the national competition, and also won the 200 IM with an NCAA B-cut time and will swim in that event, as well.
Live Results
Follow along on all three days of action with the live results from Auburn, which can be found through the NCAA home page or directly at http://results.teamunify.com/nsss/results/NCAA/2012Women/.
Watch It Live
In addition to live results, all three sessions of the NCAA Women's Swimming and Diving Championships can be seen streaming online. Auburn will stream the preliminary sessions for all three days as well as Thursday's finals (direct links can be found below). ESPN has the rights to the Friday and Saturday final sessions and will stream them online at WatchESPN.com.
Thursday Prelims - http://ulive.cbssports.com/index-ncaa.html?media=303037
Thursday Finals - http://ulive.cbssports.com/index-ncaa.html?media=308984
Friday Prelims - http://ulive.cbssports.com/index-ncaa.html?media=303038
Saturday Prelims - http://ulive.cbssports.com/index-ncaa.html?media=303039
Starting A Historic Trend
This is the second-consecutive year McClellan has earned a trip to the NCAA meet after just her sophomore season. One year ago, she capped an outstanding freshman campaign that ended with her becoming the first-ever female from the Horizon League and the first-ever Panther swimmer to earn a trip to the NCAA Championship meet. In her first trip to nationals, she swam just shy of her season-best times and had her best placing in the 100 breast where she ranked 35th against the best swimmers in the country.
Leading The Nation
With all qualifying times in, McClellan ranks in the top-10 in the country in two of the three events she will compete in this weekend. The sophomore boasts her best comparison in the 100 breaststroke, swimming the fifth-fastest time in the nation at 59.25 seconds. She's not far behind that mark in the 200 breaststroke, placing 10th after her league-record swim of 2:08.94 at the Horizon League meet two weeks ago. She also owns one of the fastest times in the country in the 200 IM after posting her third league, school and championship record with a time of 1:59.84.
A Season Of Success
Looking back on McClellan's 2011-2012 season provides some incredible numbers for the UWM standout. In the three events she will be competing in nationally, the sophomore broke her own school and league record twice on the year, broke the Klotsche Center record in the 200 breaststroke and helped break the Klotsche record in both the 200 and 400 medley relays despite only having two home meets on the year. She also broke countless opposing schools' pool records and, of the 21 times she competed in her three main events, she failed to finish first only twice.
(Release courtesy of Tim Prahl, Milwaukee athletics)
