Danbury, CT — The State University of New York at New Paltz swimming programs started its dual meet schedule with two dominant performances en route to men's and women's wins at Western Connecticut State on Saturday.
The SUNY New Paltz men's team won with a 166-42 point performance, taking first place in every event except the 100-yard freestyle, while the women's Hawks claimed victory in every event on their way to a 161-46 win.
"It was nice to get our first wins of the season on both sides. For myself, it felt great to look back on the last year and a half and see the progress we have made as a program start to show," said Hawks coach Matt Distler. "I was impressed by our energy and attitudes again, and happy to see many of our freshmen and sophomores get their first college event wins."
SUNY New Paltz's women's team started the day with a 200-yard medley relay victory, as the team of Victoria Bogdanski, Delilah Griger, Kirsten Giovanniello and Julia Iaboni came in first place with a final time of 2:02.38. The men's team won the same event next, with Korey Barber, Xavier Calderon, Nicholas Brown and Venn Engstrom securing first place at 1:46.36.
The Hawks won the next six events on the day, the 1,000, 200 and 50-yard freestyles. Kathryn Kolar (1,000 freestyle), Alex Kassian (200 freestyle), and Iaboni (50 freestyle) claimed victories with 12:09.79, 2:06.64, and 27.96 times, respectively. For the men's Hawks, Ethan Bonney (1,000 freestyle), Owen Rowards (200 freestyle) and Steven Macaluso (50 freestyle) won the three freestyle events with 10:52.49, 1:53.45 and 23.41 finishes. Kolar (2:26.32), Taylor Pazderski (2:32.68) and Natalia Giunta (2:34.75) placed first, second and third to combine for 16 points in the race; Luke Hoyt, in his first collegiate action, won the men's IM with a 2:13.18 time. 
SUNY New Paltz secured 1-2-3 finishes on both the men's and women's sides in the 100 yard butterfly events, as Abigail Keiser (1:10.08) and Hannah Fisher (1:10.39) had a contested finish for first place and Chloe Jeffares (1:12.32) just finished ahead of Liv Sosnoski by four tenths of a second to secure third place. Myles Dower (56.46), Mason Kennedy (57.92) and Zac Brown (58.60) secured 16 points for the men's team.
In the 100 yard freestyles, Griger (58.50) edged out Molly Henry by half a second to win the women's race, while David Lawrence won Western Connecticut State its only event of the day in the men's freestyle. Iaboni (1:08.17) and Rowlands (1:00.10) won their second individual events of the day in the 100 yard backstroke as both teams secured clean sweeps in the top three. Candela Sandoval (1:09.32) and Ginny Frazee (1:10.50) for the women's Hawks and Venn Engstrom (1:02.13) and Leo Litovsky (1:02.37) for the men's Hawks completed the 16 point scores.
SUNY New Paltz won the final six events of the day, as Brandon Molina (5:09.34), Bonney (5:11.33) and Euan Barclay (5:18.03) and Angelina Somma (5:53.75), Pazderski (5:57.37) and Fisher (6:27.88) secured 1-2-3 finishes in the men's and women's 500 yard freestyle, respectively. Naomi Levey claimed victory in the 100-yard breaststroke with a 1:19.18 finish, while Hoyt won his second event of the day with a 1:06.25 time in the men's race.
The Hawks concluded the day with wins in the men's and women's 400 yard freestyle relay, with the women's team — Griger, Pazderski, Sandoval and Kolar — clocking in at 4:00.30 and the men's quartet of Brown, Dower, Litovsky, and Rowlands finishing with a finals time of 3:29.82.
SUNY New Paltz is back in the pool on Nov. 13, when it travels to Oneonta for the Hartwick/Oneonta tri-meet against the Hawks and the Red Dragons. The meet is scheduled to start at 1 p.m.
To view the full results from the meet, click here.
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