The Denison Big Red turned in their best showing at a national meet since 2005 with their third place finish on Saturday in Oxford, Ohio.

The Denison Big Red women's swimming team wrapped up a successful three days at the 2008 NCAA Division III Championships with 328 team points which was good enough for a third place overall finish.

The third place trophy is Denison's best finish since 2005 when they also took third with 305.5 points.  Over the last 10 years at the national meet the Big Red has logged one national title (2001), three second-place finishes, three third-place finishes and one fourth, one fifth and one sixth-place finish.

Kenyon College captured their 22nd national championship with 566.5 team points.  The Ladies were followed by Amherst College with 341 points.  Denison trailed Amherst by 13 points. 

On Saturday night DU was led once again by junior Kristen Hohl (Winfield, Ill./Wheaton North) and sophomore Olivia Zaleski (Corry, Pa./Corry Area).  The duo placed fourth and sixth, respectively in the 100 freestyle and also swam on Denison's third-place 400 free relay team.

In the 100 free, Hohl touched in 51.23 took take fourth place.  Zaleski came in at 51.67 seconds, a major improvement over her 52.21 time that had her seeded 11th heading into the meet.  Also competing in the 100 free for DU was junior Annamarie Novinger (Longmont, Colo./Niwot) and Kate Rich (McMurray, Pa./Peters Township).  Novinger placed 21st with a time  of 52.84 seconds and Rich ended up 30th.

The Big Red capped off nationals with their bronze medal finish in the 400 free relay.  The four aforementioned swimmers combined for a time of 3:26.48 to finish in front of fourth place Middlebury by more than three seconds.  The event championship would go to Amherst College who broke a 10-year old NCAA record with a time of 3:23.64.  The relay win would be enough for Amherst to hold off the Big Red and secure the runner-up trophy.

In the 200 butterfly senior Kacey Centrella (Douglassville, Pa./Boyertown), competing in her first national championship, rose to the occasion with a seventh place finish and a time of 2:06.47.  Senior Christine Wissink (Cortland, N.Y./Cortland) placed 21st in the event for Denison.

Sophomore Kathy Faingold (Wexford, Pa./North Allegheny) won the consolation finals of the 200 breaststroke to place ninth overall in 2:22.11.  Freshman Ksenia Golovkina (Newton, Mass./Newton South) took 20th in 2:25.95.

The first event of the night was the 1650 freestyle which saw freshman Taylor Blake (Palm Beach Gardens, Fla./Suncoast) place 10th with a time of 17:27.09.  Blake placed third at the North Coast Athletic Conference Championships in February and lowered her career-best time on Saturday by more than six seconds.

Rounding out the 2008 nationals for DU was the 200 backstroke which saw two Denison seniors and one DU rookie compete.  Veterans Anna Comella (Dover, Ohio/Dover) and Ginny Walsh (Austin, Texas/St. Andrews) placed 21st and 26th, respectively.  Freshman Bethany Sabourin (Troy, Mich./Troy Athens) took 34th place.

Complete Results