David Curtis pulled off a three-peat in the 200 freestyle after his school-record time of 1:37.20.

Senior David Curtis (Ann Arbor, Mich./Pioneer) captured his third consecutive national title in the men's 200 freestyle highlighting the second day of competition from the 2009 NCAA Division III Men's Swimming & Diving Championship from Minneapolis, Minn.

After entering the second day in a tie for sixth place, the Big Red made a move up the leader board and now find themselves in third place with 160 team points.  Emory University is in second place with 221 points and Kenyon College leads with 358.5 points.  Fourth place is occupied by St. Olaf College who trails the Big Red by 10, with 150 points.

Curtis, who had seven national titles to his credit entering the 200 freestyle, checked into the race with the fifth-fastest time after morning preliminaries.  Curtis went toe-to-toe with Amherst sophomore Alex Fraser and despite tying with a 25.15 final 50-yard split, Curtis out-touched Fraser by .28 seconds to win the gold.  Curtis' final time of 1:37.20 was a new school record that broke John Geissinger's (Darien, Conn./Lawrenceville School) time of 1:37.33 set last month at the North Coast Athletic Conference championship.  Geissinger, who's time set at the NCAC championships was the fastest in the country heading into the meet, placed eighth overall with a time of 1:40.94.

Thursday's first event saw Curtis and Geissinger team with Chris Bagley (W. Bloomfield, Mich./Brother Rice) and Mike Barczak (Beverly Hills, Mich./Brother Rice) in the 200 free relay.  The foursome set a new school record with a time of 1:20.79 to finish second to Kenyon College who broke their own 11-year old national record of 1:19.44 with a time of 1:19.15.  This marked Denison's second-straight runner-up finish at nationals in the 200 free relay.  

Later in the night Bagley would notch his second of three All-America swims on Thursday after an eighth place finish in the 100 butterfly.  Bagley improved on his NCAC championship time of 49.91 seconds by touching in 49.47.  Kenyon's Matthew Harris was the winner in 47.86.

In the men's 400 individual medley another conference champ, freshman Dan Thurston (Ann Arbor, Mich./Huron) represented Denison in the championship final after fifth place swim in morning preliminaries.  In the final Thurston would post a time of 3:58.73 to place sixth overall.  His teammate, senior Chris Sellon (Lawrence, Kan./Free State), checked in 14th overall in 4:02.56.

The last event on Thursday saw Denison's 400 medley relay team turn in a repeat performance from last year's championship with a third place finish.  Despite the duplicate finish they bested their time from a year ago by more than a second.  The team which was comprised of Curtis, Bagley, John Nemeth (Pittsburgh, Pa./Central Catholic) and Robert Barry (Richmond, Va./St. Christopher's) touched in 3:19.05.  Barry started off the race strong with a 49.30 split in the backstroke that had Denison in second place heading into the breaststroke.  Kenyon's Harris and his 47.98 split in butterfly would be the difference that would result in a new national record time of 3:15.58 for the Lords.

Denison will return on Friday for the finals in the 200 butterfly, the 100 backstroke, the 100 breaststroke and the 800 free relay.  Denison has captured three straight national titles in the 800 free relay and Curtis has been a part of all three.  The preliminaries will begin at 11 a.m. EST followed by the finals at 6:30 p.m. EST.

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