Bearcats Win Bruin Invite as Hornbeck, Price, Kisiday, and Ciatti Win Races

Newberg, Ore. - Women's Swimming won four individual races and the final relay on the second day of the Bruin Invitational to take home top team honors for the event.  The Bearcats totaled 965 points for the two-day event, beating runner-up George Fox by almost 180 points.

Sunday started with two of the Willamette 200-yard Medley Relay teams taking second and third in the opening event.  The team of Leah Howell, Anna Hornbeck, Tessa Ciatti, and Alayna Kisiday finished second in a time of 1:51.43 and were followed by the quartet of Tatum Good, Sarah Jenner, Lydia Schmitt, and Mia Sperbeck at 1:55.19.

Kisiday followed up her 100-free win on Saturday by taking the 50-yard Freestyle with a time of 25.20, as Sperbeck and Howell took third and fifth, respectively.  In the next event, the 100-yard Breaststroke, Horneck raced to a winning time of 1:09.34.

Howell followed up her swim in the 50-yard Free with a second-place finish in the 100-yard Backstroke, less than a second ahead of her teammate Good, who finished fourth.

The 200-yard Freestyle saw Willamette place five swimmers in the top seven spots as Jillian Price touched out Kisiday by .06 for the win and Sarah Jenner (4th), Jacqueline Hall (5th), and Sperbeck (7th) all scored big points for the Bearcats.

Ciatti won the final individual event with a time of 2:16.07 in the 200-yard Butterfly and led into the win for the Bearcats in the 400-yard Freestyle Relay as Price, Sperbeck, Howell, and Kisiday came in four seconds ahead of second-place PLU with a winning time of 3:41.36.

Other Bearcats in A-Finals on Sunday were Sperbeck (7th) and Natalie Thomas (8th) in the 100-yard Breaststroke, Lydia Schmitt (8th) in the 50-yard Freestyle, and Emma Schauble (7th) and Emma Noffsinger (8th) in the 100-yard Backstroke.

Willamette won the event with 965 points, well ahead of second-place George Fox University with 785.5.  Pacific Lutheran University finished third (639) and Pacific University came in fourth (287.5).

This was the last meet of 2024 for Women's Swimming.  The Bearcats will return to competition in 2025 when they travel to compete against Pacific University on Saturday, January 11th, at 11:00 am.