Day 3: AM Results | PM Results | MIAC Recap | Photos
Day 2: AM Results | PM Results | SMU Recap |  MIAC Recap | Photos
Day 1: AM Results | PM Results | SMU Recap | MIAC Recap | Photos
MIAC Championships GameDay

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. — Mark Ross (Dubuque, Iowa) made the final day of this year's Minnesota Intercollegiate Athletic Conference Championships his best, as the Saint Mary's University junior clocked a time of 1:57.54 in the 200 backstroke to place seventh overall Saturday evening at the University of Minnesota Aquatic Center.

Anna Smaron (Maple Plain, Minn.) — part of a pair of record-setting relay teams during Thursday's opening day of the three-day conference championships — touched the wall in 2:38.68 in the consolation finals to place 16th in the 200 breaststroke.

Fueled by Ross' effort, the Cardinal men placed sixth in the team standings, while the record-setting SMU women finished ninth.

St. Thomas and defending champion St. Olaf were neck-and-neck for the men's title. The two were tied after Day 1, still extremely close after Day 2, and the trophy was up for grabs into the final event on Day 3. St. Thomas pulled ahead of the Oles in the second half of the men's 400-yard freestyle relay and snatched the title from St. Olaf by just three points, 765 to 762. The title is the Tommies' second in two years.

In the women's team competition, St. Olaf gave the Gusties their best shot, but in the end, Gustavus was just a little too deep and pulled out its third-consecutive championship and fifth title in six years. The Gusties won by a margin of 43, 687-643 over the Oles.

Smaron, Linda Tierney (Cloquet, Minn.), Nikki Farmer (Medford, Wis.) and Abby Kratzke (Dent, Minn.) picked up their third school-record relay performance Saturday, touching the wall in 3:50.81 in placing ninth in the 400 freestyle relay. The quartet had already teamed to place eighth in the 200 freestyle relay with a school-record time of 1:43.98 — nine seconds faster than their qualifying time and three seconds better than the school mark, set in 1999 — while knocking four seconds off the 200 medley school record with a time of 4:14.93.

Brian Baker (Wykoff, Minn.) collected a sixth-place diving finish Saturday, totaling 344.90 points in the three-meter. Baker had posted a score of 297.65 in the one-meter on Thursday en route to a seventh-place showing. Liz Flynn (Mahtomedi, Minn.) followed up her eighth-place finish in the three-meter diving (324.65) with a seventh-place finish on Saturday, as the senior capped a stellar collegiate career by scoring 344.90 points in the one-meter diving competition.

Ross had also earned a spot in the consolation finals of the 100 backstroke on Friday, where he placed 11th with a time of 54.51. The SMU junior also posted a time of 4:24.27 in the 400 IM, missing a spot in the consolation final by less than one second.