St. Joe's Places Third at GNAC Championships

BOSTON, MA - Saint Joseph's College wrapped up the 2009 GNAC Swimming and Diving Championships with 130 points and a third-place finish behind Simmons College (305 pts) and Elms College (159).

Hannah Gajewski '12 (Biddeford, ME/McAuley) posted a first-place finish in the 1000-Free (11:40.12) and a runner-up effort in the 100-IM (1:06.76) on the second day and earned three All-Tournament nominations with three wins in the two-day event. Gajewski broke a pair of program records on the day, as she shaved over 24 seconds off her previous program-record time in the 1000-Free and .05 off her former record time in the 100-IM on Sunday.

For Simmons, the GNAC Championship is the program's sixth in a row and eighth in the last nine years. Overall, ten GNAC records and a pair of pool records were broken as more than 100 athletes from six conference members gathered at the Holmes Sports and Fitness Center on the Simmons College campus.

St. Joseph (CT) placed fourth with 114 points, Husson was fifth with 110 points and Norwich rounded out the competitors with 96 team points.

Ashton Piers '10 (Falmouth, ME/Deering) raced to a fourth-place finish with a SJC program record 36.07 time in the 50-Breast. Jamie Wojtkiewicz '12 (Bedford, NH) earned a fourth-place time (2:51.23) in the 200-Breast.

Christine Cote '13 (Biddeford, ME), Rose Maccarrone '12 (Hingham, MA), Wojtkiewicz and Gajewski helped the Monks attain 14 points with a second-place effort (4:04.20) in the 400-Free relay.

St. Joe's will kick off the 2010 portion of their schedule with a meet at Husson University on Saturday, January 16^th at 1:00 PM.