CBU Takes 13 To Nationals

Wednesday, March 8

Birmingham, Ala.

8:30 AM

California Baptist University

NCAA Division II Championships

Photo by: Andrew Shortall

CBU Takes 13 To Nationals

3/7/2017 1:31:00 PM | Men's Swimming and Diving, Swimming and Diving

By: Andrew Shortall, Asst. Sports Information Director

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – Several times this season, California Baptist University has defied expectations and outperformed its rankings, and will look to do so again at the NCAA Division II Championships this weekend.

CBU enters as the 16th-ranked team in D-II and hopes a balanced approach will help it outperform that prediction. Seven swimmers and three divers qualified individually to compete at the Birmingham Crossplex, along with all five relay teams, which is part of the D-II Sports Festival.

The national championship event will begin at 8:30 a.m. PDT on Wednesday and conclude Saturday evening. Live stats and video will be available for each day of competition. For those in the area, tickets may be purchased online at www.ncaa.com/tickets.

"The goal is definitely to get within the top-10 and have balanced scoring all the way across: in relays, individual events and on the boards," Coach Rick Rowland said. "We want to be more of a balanced team. We have some individuals who I think will really shine here."

Swimmers Robert Griffith, Alexis Ohmar, Justin Quiroga, Brandon Schuster, Tanner Shore, Scott Tolman and Bernardo Valentim qualified to swim individually, while Garret Chew, Zach Parry and Andrew Rotundo will be on the boards. Parry will look to build on his four All-American awards this week.

CBU's strength will be in freestyle events, with five of its individual qualifiers taking part in the 200 free and four in the 500 free.

Griffith, a six-time NCAA All-American was one of three Lancers to post an automatic time in the 1650 free (15:20.66), and is also seeded fourth in the 1000 (9:09.42), 15^th in the 500 freestyles (4:27.07) and will swim the 200 free (1:40.54). The junior distance freestyle produced three top-12 individual finishes last year and eyes more this week.

Justin Quiroga looks to continue his banner season, seeded fifth in the 200 individual medley (1:47.25), 15th in the 200 free (1:37.67), 25th in the 400 IM (3:56.24) and 29th in the 200 butterfly (1:49.30). The most recent addition to the team, Brandon Schuster, is also seeded sixth in the 400 IM (3:50.57) and 21^st in the 200 IM (1:49.04).

Tolman has big hopes for his D-II Championship debut after qualifying for all four of his individual events. The true freshman is seeded ninth in the 200 breast (1:57.91), 17^th in the 200 (1:48.66) and 400 IMs (3:53.98) and 19^th in the 100 breast (54.63).

Ohmar and Valentim, who have 11 All-American honors between them, will swim both the 100, 200 and 500 frees and on several relays together. Ohmar and Valentim seeded 14^th (1:37.64) and 23rd (1:38.08) in the 200 frees, respectively, while Ohmar is also seeded 31st in the 100 free (44.68).

Shore produced an All-American finish on one of the relay teams last season and will eye a top-16 individual finish, along with more relay honors, this season. He posted the 24th-best, 500-free time (4:28.22) in all of Division II this season and will also swim the 200 free (1:39.21), 1000 free (30th, 9:20.29) and 1650 free (35th, 15:51.14).

The men qualified four out of five relays, with the 800-free relay team earning the highest seeding of them all at No. 4, with a time of 6:32.00. The 400-free relay team comes in ranked ninth (2:58.71), while the 200-medley relay team is seeded 19^th (1:29.90) and the 200-free team is 21^st (1:22.76). David Ring, Christian Britton and Adrien Deloffre made the trip as relay-only swimmers and will look to bring in big points for CBU.

"We have people here with chances to be top-eight, top-16 and even top-three, which is huge," Rowland said. "We could get a few relays that could go top-eight. It would be big to get them on the podium because that's a lot of points, but that's really hard to do."