Sophomores Elise Mason and Megan Clifford traveled to Indianapolis for this year’s championship meet. Mason, who was Hillsdale’s sole representative at nationals last year, swam the 500 yard, 1000 yard, and 1650 yard freestyle events. This year she was joined by Clifford who qualified to race the 200 yard butterfly.
“The meet itself can be kind of a stressful environment just for me, because you get there and there are big teams there and you’re the only one on your team, especially right away when Megan wasn’t there yet,” Mason said. “It was really helpful having Megan come and have a really good race herself. Having another teammate there really was helpful too, because it wasn’t just me trying to squeeze in somewhere on the bleachers. We had more of a team there.”
Both athletes hit lifetime bests in one event each and earned All-American status by placing within the top 16 in their best events.
On day three of the meet, Clifford beat her own best time by about a second in the preliminary heat and moved from the number 16 seed to number 8 for the final. In the final, she beat out one more athlete to place seventh overall with a time of 2:01.81, becoming the fifth All-American Charger swimmer in history and the first since 2019.
“I was very surprised by my performance, but I am very proud of how I did,” Clifford said. “Becoming an All-American was a goal I had for before I graduated and I was surprised but very excited that I was able to achieve it this season.”
This swim broke not only her own personal record but also the G-MAC record and an 11-year-old Hillsdale College record.
“I experienced one of the best swims by a swimmer of mine in my 32 years of college coaching,” he said. “Last year, she just wasn’t able to figure it out in terms of swimming at that high level against those guys. She got really nervous. But a combination of controlling her nerves and just swimming it the right way and keeping with her pace allowed her to really break through.”
On the final day of the meet, Mason swam the 1650, her top event. Going in, she was seeded number 25 with a time of 11:17.51. She improved upon this time by about 12 seconds, finishing in 16:59.27 and improving upon her seed to take eleventh place.
“It’s pretty extraordinary for someone to drop that much time,” Kirner said. “When you get to that level, that’s quite a bit. She’s always been doing really good things. She didn’t have the storied career that some of the kids do coming out of high school and such and she kind of was ready to take off when she got to college. I feel kinda lucky in that way.”
Mason had already held the Hillsdale record in the race, so her improved time made her the first Charger to break 17 minutes in the 1650 yard freestyle and the sixth All-American Charger swimmer in history.
“Both of these athletes are at a point where they haven’t perfected this by any means, they both have more to do, so this was just a really great meet for both of them,” Kirner said.
