Senior Sara Daher earned six All-America awards at last week's NCAA Championships, wrapping up a tremendous career and leading Bates to 13th place out of 51 scoring teams, their fourth straight top-17 national finish.
Already decorated with the most All-America honors in Bates athletics history, Daher earned her 18th such award Wednesday night with her fifth-place finish in the 200-yard individual medley, highlighting the first day of the NCAA Division III Swimming & Diving Championships at the CISD Natatorium.
Daher (Marblehead, Mass.) broke her own team 200 IM record set in 2015 by 0.09 seconds, swimming the championship final in 2:02.42, 0.90 ahead of sixth-place Julia Durmer of Emory. It is her second-highest national finish in the 200 IM, after last year's second-place showing.
Bates' women's 200-yard freestyle relay team swam 1:34.46 in the morning trials and 1:34.43 in the evening session to claim 12th place, earning honorable mention All-America honors for junior Logan McGill (Dallas, Texas), first-year Janika Ho (Los Angeles, Calif.), junior Anabel Carter (Camden, Maine) and Daher. The All-America honor was the 19th in Daher's career, the seventh for McGill, the first for Ho and the second for Carter.
The Bates women's 800 free relay team earned Honorable Mention All-America honors with a ninth-place showing and a time of 7:30.68. Daher led off the race, followed by McGill, sophomore Lucy Faust (Piedmont, Calif.) and first-year Monica Sears (San Anselmo, Calif.). The race represented Daher's 20th All-America honor and the first for Faust, who made her NCAA Championship debut. McGill claimed her eighth career All-America honor and Sears her second.
A day after shattering her own team 100-yard backstroke record in the opening leg of the 400 medley relay, Daher lopped another 0.24 seconds off the mark with her trial time of 55.49 seconds, fifth fastest in the field -- defying her 18th seeding in the event. Daher finished the championship final in 55.98 seconds, good for eighth place and her 21st career All-America honor.
Daher concluded her transcendent college swimming career with possibly her finest day Saturday at the NCAA Championships, breaking three team records and notching her 22nd and 23rd career All-America honors.
Daher began the day by smashing her own Bates standard in the 200-yard backstroke, breaking the 2-minute mark for the first time with a time of 1:59.62, the third fastest in a field of 38 swimmers. In Saturday's evening session, Daher's time of 2:00.25 gave her sixth place.
Daher's final swim for the Bobcats was as the leadoff leg in the 400-yard freestyle relay on Saturday night. Daher swam the first 100 yards of the race in 51.26 seconds, breaking the team 100 free record of 51.41 established by McGill in 2015 and propelling Bates to shattering the team record in the event with a time of 3:24.83.
In the morning session Bates had chopped 0.65 seconds off of the team record that stood at the the start of the day, a 3:27.10 swum at the 2015 NCAA Championships by Daher, Caroline Depew, Lindsey Prelgovisk and McGill.
Bates missed making the championship final in the event by 0.03 seconds behind Middlebury, but was outraced by MIT for ninth place in the consolation final. Bates' final time was the sixth fastest of any team but counts for 10th place, giving Daher the 23rd and final All-America honor of her career. Daher won six All-America awards over the four days of the NCAA meet, which she began already owning the Bates athletics record for All-America awards (17).
