BOWLING GREEN, Ky. - On day one of the 2009 Hilltopper Invite, the WKU swimming and diving teams blew past the competition taking an early lead in both competitions. In the women's competition, the Lady Toppers finished with 471 points. Vanderbilt recorded 243.5 points, Marshall posted 239.5 points, the University of the Cumberlands recorded 106 points and Centre College tallied 86 points. On the men's side, the Hilltoppers led the Invite with 440 points while Missouri S&T finished the night with 273 points, University of the Cumberlands finished with 179 points and Centre College picked up 113 points.

"The purpose of having this meet in November is to have a rehearsal for a three-day conference championship," head coach Bruce Marchionda said. "We were looking for specific things to improve upon and I am pleased with how they handled the prelims and the finals. You always want to come back at night and swim faster when it counts and this evening we were able to break three pool records, which I thought was very good for this time of the year. Claire Donahue broke the 50 Freestyle with her lead off in the 200 Free relay of 23.60. Both of our women's 200 free relay and 400 medley relay broke pool records tonight. I thought those were very good swims on their part. On the men's side, we continued to improve that depth factor which is going to be very important at the conference championship and we were very pleased with that."

In the first race of the night, the women's 200 medley relay, the Lady Topper team of Claire Donahue, Claire Alexandre, Meredith Dement and Kristiana Feeser took top honors finishing with a time of 1:35.15. The second WKU team of Hilary Mishler, Laurel Chaney, Jana Kahrig and Stephanie Terrell finished right behind the first place team after posting a time of 1:38.51. In the men's race, WKU make it a clean sweep for the Hilltoppers after Zane Rowland, William Kunkel, William Varley and Chris Donahue took first place with a finals time of 1:24.27.

The Lady Toppers followed up their opening win in the 500 Free taking third through fifth place with Alex Van Oost leading the way. In the event, Van Oost finished with a time of 5:06.23 to finish third while Georgia Smith finished fourth with a time of 5:08.86 and Kathryn Sutton finished fifth after touching the wall in 5:09.21.

The women's team picked up their second win of the night in the 200 IM behind the efforts of Kristiana Feeser. Feeser finished in first after posting a time of 2:07.42. Donahue kept things rolling for the Lady Toppers in the 50 Free winning the event with a time of 23.80. In the 50 Free, Dement finished second with a time of 24.60.

In the final women's event of the day, WKU once again picked up the first and second place spots after the WKU "A" team posted a time of 3:47.56.

In women's diving, Caitlin Dean won the three-meter competition after tallying 204.85 points. Kylie Ruiz placed fourth in the event with 229.80 points.

In the men's competition, the Hilltoppers got off to a fast start in the 500 Free with Sean Penhale picking up the win after recording a time of 4:34.62. The Hilltoppers followed up that performance in the 200 IM with another victory behind the efforts of Cameron Higdon. Higdon finished the race with a time of 1:54.48 to take home top honors. In the final individual event of the night, the 50 Free, the Hilltoppers placed first through third. In the event, Rowland placed first for the Hilltoppers with a time of 21.11. Behind Rowland in second place was Kunkel, who finished with a time of 21.30, and in third place was Varley, who posted a time of 21.69.

The Hilltoppers also picked up the win in the 400 medley relay after Cameron Watkins, Luke Musser, Nick Slattery and Kunkel placed first with a time of 3:23.19, over five seconds faster than the second place team.

In the men's diving events, Jim Ritter placed second in the one meter competition with 242.60 points and Vincent Rominger placed third after recording 263.65 points.