All-Conference Honors
Day One Results  |  Day Two Results  |  Day Three Results  |  Day Four Results

YORK, Pa. - On Sunday night, the Messiah women's swimming team wrapped up their sixth-straight MAC Championship with 648 points across the four-day meet. Messiah defeated the Widener Pride (459 team points) by 189 points to continue their streak of dominance in the conference. The Falcons also picked up a pair of individual awards with Kaylee Hollenbach being named the MAC Swimmer of the Year and Nancie Ziegler earning Rookie of the Year accolades.

Messiah entered the meet as the heavy favorite to repeat for the sixth time and the Falcons lived up to the hype. Messiah won seven individual and four relay events while picking up a total of 18 All-Conference honors. Messiah claimed at least one All-Conference honor in 16 of the 18 events contested.
 
See below for recaps from each day of the Championships along with Messiah's All-Conference honors:
 
Day One Update - Thursday, Feb. 14, 2019
Messiah started the Championships off by taking second in the 200 Medley Relay with a time of 1:48.09 by the team of Kaylee Hollenbach, Alley Sell, Maelyn Elder, and Cassie Cotton. The Falcons finished less than a second behind the Stevenson Mustangs, who won the event with a time of 1:47.11.
 
The Falcons earned their first gold medal of the weekend with a first-place finish in the 800 Free Relay. The team of Britta Heath, Maelyn Elder, Brittany Pond, and Nancie Ziegler got to the wall in 7:50.21 to edge second-place Widener (7:52.03) by less than two seconds.

Day Two Update - Friday, Feb. 15, 2019
Messiah claimed three of the four events contested on Friday night and won a total of five All-Conference honors to extend their lead at the MAC Championships to nearly 100 points over second-place Widener through six events. Following Friday's evening session, Messiah has 253 team points while Widener is in second with 165 points.

Nancie Ziegler started off Friday evening's session with a bag, topping Arcadia's Megan Hupp by over three and a half seconds in the 500 Free in a time of 5:06.27. Ziegler turned in the top prelim time in the morning before dropping over four seconds in the finals to claim the first individual All-Confrence honor of her career with First Team accolades in the event. Teammate Britta Heath finished the 500 Free in fourth place with a time of 5:13.29, taking more than five seconds off her prelim time in the finals.

Nearly half of the women's 50 Free final was Falcons with Cassie Cotton, Emily Decker, and Nicea McCabe comprising three of the eight lanes in the event. Messiah had a dominate showing in the event with Cotton and Decker finishing first and second with times of 24.20 and 24.43, respectively. Cotton claimed first in the 50 Free for the third time in her career (2016, 2017, and 2019). The Second Team All-Conference honor for Decker is the first such individual honor of her career. Nicea McCabe took seventh in the event with a time of 25.15.

Like the 50 Free, Messiah was represented well in the 200 IM with Kaylee Hollenbach, Alley Sell, and Maelyn Elder all making the finals. Hollenbach took home a second-place finish in the event with a time of 2:09.17, while Sell (2:14.05) and Elder (2:15.38) finished in sixth and eighth, respectively.

Behind a stellar anchor leg from Hollenbach, the Falcons capped off the second day of competition with a victory in the 200 Free Relay in a time of 1:37.12. The team of Cotton, Decker, McCabe, and Hollenbach was neck and neck with Widener's team in the next lane over when Hollenbach dove into the pool for the final leg. Hollenbach pulled away from the Pride and everyone else in the pool with the fastest anchor leg in the relay by over a second. Her leg of 23.36 and propelled the Falcons to a nearly one second victory in the event.

Day Three Update - Saturday, Feb. 15, 2019
Two school records were broken in the Saturday night session at the MAC Champioships with Kaylee Hollenbach turning in a new program mark of 56.89 in the 100 Back and the team of Hollenbach, Alley Sell, Cassie Cotton, and Nancie Ziegler breaking not only a Messiah women's swimming record, but also a Middle Atlantic Conference record in the 400 Medley Relay with a time of 3:54.67. The Falcons won both events as well as the 200 Free (Nancie Ziegler, 1:54.61) and the 100 Breast (Alley Sell, 1:06.31) to open up a sizable lead in the team standings after three day at the Championships. Messiah has collected 449 team points, 132 points ahead of second-place Widener's 317 points.

Saturday evening's session started with Maelyn Elder and Britta Heath going two and three in the 400 IM. Elder earned her first All-Conference accolade of the weekend with a second-place finish in the event with a time of 4:42.96. She entered the final with the top time in the prelims, but Kirsten Siwy from King's dropped more than six seconds off her prelim time in the finals to win the event in 4:39.18. Heath finished in third, getting to the wall in 4:46.00.

Next up was a thriller in the 100 Fly. Cassie Cotton was looking to win her fourth-straight conference title in the 100 Fly, but the senior was edged by one hundredth of a second by Widener's Jill Bujanowski. Cotton finished in second place with a time of 56.85 while Bujanowski won the event in come-from-behind fashion with a mark of 56.84.

Nancie Ziegler claimed her second MAC gold medal of the weekend, winning the 200 Free on Saturday night with a time of 1:54.61. Midway through the race, Ziegler sat in third place by nearly half a second, but 50 yards later she held the lead and pulled away in the final leg to claim the event by over a second and a half.

In the 100 Breast, Alley Sell won the second of four-straight events for the Falcons with a time of 1:06.31. Much like Ziegler's approach to the 200 Free, Sell was in the middle of the pack when the championship heat made the turn at 50 yards. Her second leg of the race was the fastest in the pool by nearly half a second as she chased down Misericordia's Grace Nikolski (1:06.36) to win by five hundredths of a second.

Kaylee Hollenbach then bested a program record she already owned in the 100 Back with a time of 56.89, winning the event. She broke her previous record by .36 of a second and needed every bit of the record, as Stevenson's Colby Stein was hot on her heels with a time of 57.02 in second place. In addition to the program record, her time in the 100 Back gives her an NCAA "B" Cut for the National Championships. She will find out later this month whether or not she has been invited to the mid-March Championships.

The Falcons capped off the evening with another program record in the 400 Medley Relay. The team of Hollenbach, Sell, Cotton, and Ziegler led at the end of each of the four legs and turned in the top time in the event with a mark of 3:45.67. The mark is not only a program record, but also sets the best time in the event in the history of the Middle Atlantic Conference, breaking the record that Messiah set exactly a year ago on Feb. 16, 2018 (3:55.02) at the MAC Championships.

Day Four Update - Sunday, Feb. 17, 2019
The Falcons sat in the driver's seat heading into the finale of the MAC Championships on Sunday, holding a 132-point lead over second-place Widener through three days. When the dust settled on Sunday night, Messiah had increased that margin to claim their sixth-straight MAC Championship. The Falcons now have six Conference Titles in their 11 years as a program. Kaylee Hollenbach was named the Swimmer of the Year in the MAC with two individual golds, three relay golds, an individual silver, and a relay silver to her name this weekend. Hollenbach becomes the fourth-straight Falcon to be named Swimmer of the Year, following in the footsteps of Emily Reale (2016) and Kaitlin Wingert (2017 and 2018).

In addition to Hollenbach's award, Nancie Ziegler was honored as the MAC Rookie of the Year after turning in a stellar first trip to the Conference Championships. The freshman won both the 500 Free (5:06.27) and 200 Free (1:54.61) while finishing second in the 1650 Free (17:48.25) and helping Messiah to three relay victories. Ziegler becomes the fifth Falcon in the last six years to claim Rookie of the Year honors with Tara Freeman (2014), Katie Wingert (2015), Cassie Cotton (2016), and Hollenbach (2018) also winning the award in the last six years.

Ziegler started Sunday night's session with a second-place finish in the 1650 Free with a time of 17:48.25. FDU-Florham's Molly Miller won the event with a time of 17:42.70 for the first-ever event victory for FDu-Florham in the MAC Championships. Britta Heath earned a fourth-place finish in the event to stand firmly on the podium with a time of 18:08.63.

Messiah then won the next two events with Kaylee Hollenbach capping off her individual performance at the Conference meet with a victory in the 200 Back. Her time of 2:04.22 was more than a second and a half faster than her time in the prelims and helped her win the event by less than a second as she held off a charging Colby Stein (Stevenson, 2:04.97) down the stretch.

Next up was Cassie Cotton in the 100 Free. Like Hollenbach and Ziegler, Cotton was exceptional in the 2019 Championship meet, winning two individual events and helping the Falcons to three other victories in relays. In the last individual performance of her career, Cotton dominated the 100 Free with a time of 52.41. She was more than a second ahead of second-place Kaylin Augustine (53.72). Messiah's Emily Decker and Brittany Pond finished back-to-back in third and fourth with times of 54.29 and 54.64, respectively.

Alley Sell and Maelyn Elder both competed in the finals of the 200 Breast and 200 Fly, respectively. Sell finished the 200 Breast in a time of 2:29.34 to take fourth place while Elder finished in sixth in the 200 Fly, getting to the wall in 2:17.89.

With their sixth-straight Conference Championship already in the bag, the team of Cotton, Pond, Ziegler, and Hollenbach put the cherry on top of the victory with a first-place finish in the 400 Free Relay to end the meet. Messiah finished the race with a time of 3:32.92, nearly five and a half seconds faster than the second-place Widener Pride.

The Falcons earned 648 team points, marking the fifth-straight year they have scored north of 600 points at the MAC Championships. Of Messiah's six-straight Titles, this season's victory will go down as the second-most dominate in program history, trailing only the 2016 team that scored 832 team points and claimed 30 All-Conference honors. In total, Messiah won seven individual events this year with Hollenbach, Ziegler, and Cotton claiming two apiece. Alley Sell also earned a first-place finish in the 100 Breast (1:06.31). Messiah's seven individual golds, ties the 2016 Championships for the most the Falcons have won at a single MAC Championship meet. The Falcons also claimed four relay gold and picked up 18 total All-Conference honors, both are tied for the second-most Messiah has won at a Championship.

All-Conference Honors
Event # - Event Title - Swimmer - Time - Honor - Record
1 - 200 Medley Relay - K. Hollenbach, A. Sell, M. Elder, C. Cotton - 1:48.09 - 2nd place
3 - 800 Free Relay - B. Heath, M. Elder, B. Pond, N. Ziegler - 7:50.21 - 1st place
5 - 500 Free - Nancie Ziegler - 5:06.27 - 1st place
7 - 200 IM - Kaylee Hollenbach - 2:09.17 - 2nd place
9 - 50 Free - Cassie Cotton - 24.20 - 1st place
9 - 50 Free - Emily Decker - 24.43 - 2nd place
11 - 200 Free Relay - C. Cotton, E. Decker, N. McCabe, K. Hollenbach - 1:37.12 - 1st place
13 - 400 IM - Maelyn Elder - 4:42.96 - 2nd place
13 - 400 IM - Britta Heath - 4:46.00 - 3rd place
15 - 100 Fly - Cassie Cotton - 56.85 - 2nd place
17 - 200 Free - Nancie Ziegler - 1:54.61 - 1st place
19 - 100 Breast - Alley Sell - 1:06.31 - 1st place
21 - 100 Back - Kaylee Hollenbach - 56.89 - 1st place - Program Record - NCAA "B" Cut
23 - 400 Medley Relay - K. Hollenbach, A. Sell, C. Cotton, N. Ziegler - 3:54.67 - 1st place - Program Record - MAC Record
25 - 1650 Free - Nancie Ziegler - 17:48.25 - 2nd place
27 - 200 Back - Kaylee Hollenbach - 2:04.22 - 1st place
29 - 100 Free - Cassie Cotton - 52.41 - 1st place
35 - 400 Free Relay - C. Cotton, B. Pond, N. Ziegler, K. Hollenbach - 3:32.92 - 1st place

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