East Carolina University
The American Championships
Pirates Capture First American Conference Title
February 21, 2015 | Swimming & Diving
Championship Central | Final Results | Final Standings | 
Photo Gallery l 
Highlights
GREENSBORO, N.C. --- The first American Athletic Conference championship in East Carolina University history was won Saturday night by the men's swimming and diving team, the program's first conference championships since winning the 1989 Colonial Athletic Association title.
The Pirates finished with 892.5 points, 34.5 points ahead of second-place SMU with 858 points. UConn came in third-place with 723 points and Cincinnati placed fourth with 642.5 points.
"The men were dominating all week," said ECU Head Coach Rick Kobe, who was named 2015 American Athletic Conference Men's Swimming Coach-of-the-Year. "We are very proud to be the first team to win an American conference championship.
It was the ninth conference coach-of-the-year award for Kobe in his 33 years of coaching at ECU.
ECU clinched the title in the final event, edging SMU by 0.01 in the 400 free relay. Trevor Irish touched just ahead of the Mustangs' Christian Scherubl in the final leg of the relay to clinch the title. Nikola Simic, Shawn Hunter and Fran Krznaric joined Irish on the gold medal squad with a time of 2:56.79.
Rokas Cepulis set a championship meet record in the 200 breast with a time of 1:54.59. It was his third individual first-place of the meet after he won the 100 breast and 200 IM earlier this week.
Michael Dugan picked up his second medal of the meet Saturday with a third-place finish in the 1650 free with a time of 15:29.86.
Daniel Woods captured the silver medal in the 200 fly with a time of 1:46.54 as did Simic in the 100 free, finishing a mere 0.16 out of first-place. Simic touched in a time of 43.75, while Irish followed in third-place with a mark of 44.24
On the women's side, the Pirates finished in third-place with 595.5 points. SMU took the team title with 797 points and UConn claimed second-place with 619 points.
Senior Lauren Chew (16:44.49) became the first ECU swimmer to earn the gold medal by touching more than five seconds ahead of silver medalist teammate Megan Rossi (17:00.67).
Junior Bailie Monahan joined her teammate atop the medal stand as she earned the gold medal in the 200 fly, touching 0.27 ahead of runner-up Soph Nothnagle of UConn.
Players Mentioned
