(L-R) Ksenia Golovkina, Kristen Hohl, Olivia Zaleski and Kate Rich set conference records in the 200 free relay and the 400 medley relay on Thursday night. Denison leads by 61.5 points heading into Friday.

Denison will take a 61.5 point lead into the second day of the 2009 North Coast Athletic Conference Swimming & Diving Championship after winning five of six events in Thursday's opening night of action.  Not only did the DU women race out to five wins.  They did it in grandiose fashion, setting four new NCAC records in the process.

Entering Friday Denison has 533 team points while Kenyon checks in with 471.5 points.  Wittenberg is third with 272 points and Allegheny follows in fourth with 249 points.

The relay foursome of Olivia Zaleski (Corry, Pa./Corry Area), Ksenia Golovkina (Newton, Mass./South), Kate Rich (McMurray, Pa./Peters Township) and Kristen Hohl (Winfield, Ill./Wheaton North) opened the meet with a victory in the 200 free relay and closed the night with a win in the 400 medley relay.  The 200 free relay saw the group touch in 1:32.95 breaking a 10-year conference record set by Denison in 1998.  

The 400 medley relay time of 3:45.79 broke the previous conference mark by 5.91 seconds.  A record that was also previously held by Denison and set in 2005.  Leading off the race, Zaleski got the Big Red out to a big lead after a 55.94 split in the butterfly.  Hohl would anchor with a 50.20 split to to clinch the new record.

In other record-setting swims Zaleski and Hohl would place 1-2 in the 50 freestyle, a reversal of last year's finish that saw Hohl take the title and Zaleski walk away with the silver.  Zaleski broke old conference record held by Wooster's Kayla Heising after touching in 23.19 seconds.  In fact, all of the top-3 finishers (Zaleski, Hohl and Kenyon's Elizabeth Carlton) broke the old meet record.  For Zaleski, the 2008 NCAC Swimmer of the Year, it would mark her second individual NCAC title of her career.

Freshman Hilary Callen (Oswego, N.Y./Oswego) picked up DU's first individual win of the championship after her meet record performance in the 500 freestyle.  She touched in 4:53.65, breaking the meet record she had just set earlier this morning in preliminaries.  Junior Jenny Cunningham (Gainesville, Fla./Gainesville) followed in second place with a time of 4:55.95 while Breanna Gordon (Mission Viejo, Calif./Santa Margarita) took fourth in 5:03.90.  Annamarie Novinger (Longmont, Colo./Niwot) and Laurel Brabson (Boonsboro, Md./Boonsboro) rounded out the event with seventh and 10th place finishes, respectively.

After the DU men took the top-three spots in the 3-meter dive the women nearly equaled their performance in the 1-meter.  First-year Brett Balling (Troy, Mich./Troy) won the event with her total of 387.15 points.  She was followed by last year's 1-meter winner, Sammie Salas  who netted 336.25 points.  Coming in sixth out of 14 total divers was sophomore Lizzie Litwak (Loudonville, N.Y./Albany Academy for Girls) who garnered 303.20 points help Denison remain in first place entering day two.

The one event where rival Kenyon did manage to make up some ground on Denison was the 200 individual medley.  Rich wound up placing second with a time of 2:06.73 and led the race after a 26.98 butterfly split.  Kenyon freshman Kellyn Caldwell would rally for a winning time of 2:05.94 and lead a group of five Kenyon Ladies in the top-seven.  Taking sixth place for DU was Bethany Sabourin (Troy, Mich./Athens) and in eighth, Lauren Barone (Maumee, Ohio/Notre Dame Academy) clocked a time of 2:08.69.

Denison will return to action on Friday with the 200 medley relay, the 400 IM, 100 fly, 100 free, 100 breaststroke, 100 backstroke, 3-meter dive and the 800 free relay.  Preliminaries begin each day at 10 a.m. with finals starting at 6:30 p.m.

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