Canton, OH. – The best of the best in both the Great Midwest Athletic Conference (GMAC) and the Mountain East Conference (MEC) came together at the C.T. Brannin Natatorium on Tuesday for day one of the GMAC/MEC Championships. The Wheeling University Men's Swimming team took the pool and showed off their distance event chops on day one of competition. Both junior Ethan Banks and sophomore Nathan Yost took on the 1000 Meter Freestyle, and Banks would end the day with a top 10 finish.

The top finisher of the day was junior Ethan Banks, who kicked off the third conference championship event of his career. He came into the day with a seed time of 11:03.44 and was looking to continue lowering his score. He was able to drop his seed time by just over 34 seconds as he placed 8th overall after the preliminaries with a time of 10:28.68 and seventh among MEC competition. However, eight more swimmers would take on the 1000 Yard Freestyle during the finals, and their swims dropped Banks to 15th overall and 8th among MEC competition. It was a strong start for Banks to the conference championship event as he moves on to day two with one top 10 finish under his belt.

The other Cardinal to take the pool was Nathan Yost, who also swam in the 1000 Freestyle. Yost would also swim in the morning 1000 Freestyle event and came in with a lower seed time than Banks at 10:50.93. Yost would also drop his seed time and PR'd by just over 12 seconds with a time of 10:38.81 to place him 11th in the field after the morning event. After the night swim, Yost dropped to 19th overall and would finish just outside the top 10 in the MEC, with an 11th place finish in the conference. Both swimmers showed off their distance skills on day one and are looking to build off of that for the rest of the event.

Day two of the GMAC/MEC Championships is scheduled for Wednesday, February 8th, with preliminaries at 10 AM and the finals at 6 PM. You can follow along with Live Results HERE or Watch the event live HERE.