Wheeling, W. Va. - The regular season came to an end for the Wheeling University Women's Swimming team Friday as they bounced back with a tri-meet sweep. On Tuesday, the Mountain East Conference (MEC) released their weekly Conference Player of the Week Awards, presented by The Healthplan. It was senior
Gabby Baiano who was honored for leading the way in the comebakc win, earning the conference's Women's Swimmer of the Week award for the first time this season.
It was a busy day for the Cardinal's distance leader, who competed in three individual events and one relay event on the night. She would finish with two of her team's three individual wins in the effort, splitting those wins between the distance and sprint events. Among those results were a season-best time, coming in the 100-Yard Butterfly, and a first place finish in the 500-Yard Freestyle swim. While she didn't compete in the Medley relay to open the night, she came back to round out the day, swimming as part of the 400-Yard Freestyle Relay. It wrapped up what was a big senior day win for the Cardinals, with Baianio being one of three teammates on the women's team to be honored before the event began.
After the ceremony wrapped up, Baiano would start her day in the 500-Yard Freestyle event, the lone distance event of the night. The senior would pick up her biggest win of the night, swimming a time of 5:22.28, beating out the rest of the field by just over seven seconds. Her other win would come in the 100 Yard Butterfly, where she would set a new season-best mark. She would swim the race in a time of 1:03.94, beating her previous season best by just under half a second. She beat out her former teammate Marra Johnson of Fairmont State by nearly a second to round out her best swim of the night. Her final individual swim would be in the 100-Yard Freestyle, where she finished sixth overall with a time of 57.70 seconds. She would round out her day in the 400 Freestyle Relay, where she served as the anchor to the team's second place finish. She would round out the foursome's time of 3:49.00 to finish second overall in the race.
Baiano took home her first MEC Women's Swimmer of the Week award, and marked the 29th time this season that a Wheeling University Student-Athlete has won conference player of the week honors. It is the second time this season that a Wheeling Women's Swimmer won the award, with Baiano joining teammate
Androniki Chrysafi in being honored this season. She is also the second Cardinal to be honored this week, with Men's Swimmer Segmen Duygun being named the Male Swimmer of the Week as the Wheeling Swimming program sweeps the MEC's weekly honors.
Gabby Baiano and the Wheeling University Women's Swimming team returns to action on Tuesday, February 10th, when they compete on day one of the 2026 MEC/GMAC Swimming & Diving Championships.
