Harahush Sprints to a Pair of Records at Wooster Invite

WOOSTER, Ohio – Lady Warrior freshman swimmer Julie Harahush (Pottsville, Pa./Pottsville) highlighted Lycoming’s showing in the Wooster Invitational by breaking a pair of sprint records.  The three-day event, running from December 1-3, was hosted by the College of Wooster in Wooster, Ohio.

As a team, the Warriors traveled with only 18 swimmers (12 women, six men), so team scores were not of importance to Lycoming.  Instead, the experience was used as a tune-up for the Middle Atlantic Conference championships in February.  Both the MAC’s and the Wooster Invite use the same two-round format in which each event has a preliminary race to qualify for the finals. 

Harahush didn’t wait long to set her first mark.  On day one, she swam 24.84 seconds to finish second overall in the 50-yard freestyle.  That time eclipsed the 2001 record of 24.92 seconds set by Andrea Rapach.

On day three, Harahush broke her own mark set previously this season.  She earned another second-place overall finish in the 100-yard freestyle in a time of 54.39 seconds, breaking the school-record time of 54.87 seconds that she posted on November 12 in a double-dual meet against Elizabethtown College and Washington & Jefferson College.

Several other swimmers posted good weekends for the Warriors.  The women’s 200-yard freestyle relay team of freshman Sarah Hartshorne (Alburtis, Pa./Emmaus), sophomore Holly Miller (Lykens, Pa./Upper Dauphin), senior Kelly Sykes (Willimantic, Conn./Windham) and Harahush finished second and narrowly missed setting a school record.

Sykes had a pair of individual top-ten finishes on day two.  She placed fourth in the 100-yard butterfly and earned a fifth position in the 100-yard backstroke.  Junior Amy Gatehouse (Bethel Park, Pa./Bethel Park) also picked up a pair of top-ten showings.  On day two, she finished eighth in the 100-yard breaststroke and followed that with another eighth place result in the 200-yard breaststroke on day three.

Also finishing tenth or better were freshman Milvana Ban (Harrisburg, Pa./Bishop McDevitt) with an eighth place showing in the 400-yard individual medley, senior Niels Olsen (Evanston, Ill./Evanston) touching ninth in the 200-yard freestyle, and senior Steve Hawley (New Cumberland, Pa./Trinity) with a 10^th place finish in the men’s 50-yard freestyle.

Listed below are the Warrior finalists from all three days.

Day One

Day Two

Day Three