COLUMBIA, Ky. – A long list of season and personal best times led Campbellsville University women's swimming to a third-place standing Friday evening after day one of the Mid-South Conference meet at Lindsey Wilson College.

The Lady Tigers will enter Saturday's final day of competition with 205.5 team points, only 11.5 points behind Lindsey Wilson for second place. University of the Cumberlands leads all five MSC teams with 543.5 points.

"There were improvements all the way through as far as individual times from one session to the next. There was a strong sense of team unity and team focus, not self focus today," CU swim coach Casey Smith said. "The hard work is paying off. Those that have really been putting in the effort the last month, you can tell."

The day began at 11 a.m. EST with preliminaries and concluded with an evening round of finals for 18 men's and women's events.

Beginning in the preliminaries, times began to drop, starting with the 200-yard freestyle relay. The Lady Tigers saw season bests at each leg (Bailey Foxworth, April Hill, Kyle Perkins and Shelby Mattingly). The relay team entered the finals in third, but beat Lindsey Wilson's relay by two seconds with a season best time of 1:46.62, five seconds faster than its morning prelim.

Foxworth continued to improve through the day. She dropped six seconds off her best time of the season to qualify for the finals in the 500-yard freestyle race and went on to shave another five seconds (11 total for the day) to finish second with an NAIA A standard time of 5:25.45.

The A standard guarantees that Foxworth will compete in both the 500-yard freestyle and mile races at the NAIA Championships later this month. She previously had B standard times in both events.

Also achieving an A standard time Friday was Shelby Mattingly, who posted a career-best time of 25.66 in the 50-yard freestyle to finish fourth. Earlier in the day, Carrie Wohlschlegel posted a season-best time of 28.91 in the event's preliminaries.

Foxworth and Mattingly join senior April Hill as the only Lady Tigers to qualify for individual events at the NAIA Championships so far.

Another strong improvement came from freshman Jenna Rueff, who swam the 200-yard IM for the first time this season and finished third with a time of 2:37.89.

Rueff also competed in the 100-yard butterfly, alongside teammate Kathleen Ewing. Ewing dropped nearly 2.5 seconds off her time from morning to evening to post a lifetime best of 1:05.63 in the event and finished fifth. Rueff also posted a lifetime best at 1:08.89, as she went on to tie for seventh place in the event.

Rhaven Dunn was another Lady Tiger, which showed improvement Friday, lowering her time in the 100-yard breaststroke to 1:33.99 in the finals after posting a prelim time of 1:37.15.

The successful career- and season-best times are exciting for the program, but also leaves Smith having to figure out how to best prepare her relay teams for nationals.

"Everyone is improving all over the place, so it's really going to take pulling in all of the results and seeing where everyone fits best," Smith said. "I'm so excited over our career bests though. I feel jazzed and pumped to be able to share these results with everybody. I'm so proud of them and proud to be their coach. It makes me excited to talk to my recruits and see how they did in regionals today and share our experiences of the day. "

Campbellsville will return to competition at 9 a.m. Saturday for the final day of the MSC meet.

"I'm really excited to see how everything turns out," Smith said. "I saw a lot of good attitudes and everyone working well with one another. There were a lot of pleased and proud moments throughout the first day."

The MSC meet is the first conference organized swim meet CU has competed in as a program in more than a decade. Since the program was reestablished in 2007, the Lady Tigers have not been a member of a swim conference. During the 1990s, CU competed in both the Appalachian Swim Conference and Kentucky Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (KIAC), winning championships in both.

RESULTS
Women's 200-Yard Freestyle Relay: (Foxworth, Hill, Perkins, Mattingly) Campbellsville, second, 1:46.62.

Women's 500-Yard Freestyle: Foxworth, Campbellsville, second, 5:25.45.

Women's 200-Yard IM: Rueff, Campbellsville, third, 2:37.89; Lindy Charity, Campbellsville, 2:40.99.

Women's 50-Yard Freestyle: Mattingly, Campbellsville, fourth, 25.66.

Women's 100-Yard Breststroke: Hill, Campbellsville, third, 1:12.73; Dunn, Campbellsville, ninth, 1:33.99.

Women's 100-Yard Backstroke: Perkins, Campbellsville, seventh, 1:09.06.

Women's 100-Yard Butterfly: Ewing, Campbellsville, fifth, 1:05.63.; Rueff, Campbellsville, seventh, 1:08.89.

Women's 200-Yard Freestyle: Wohlschlegel, Campbellsville, seventh, 2:19.84.

Women's 400-Yard Medley Relay: (Perkins, Hill, Foxworth, Mattingly), Campbellsville, 4:20.53.


TEAM SCORES
University of the Cumberlands 543.5
Lindsey Wilson College 216
Campbellsville University 205.5
Bethel University 116
University of the Cumberlands 25