Broken Records Highlight Day One of BIG EAST Championships

GENEVA, Oh. – The Seton Hall men's swimming and diving team wrapped up a record-breaking opening night of competition at the 2025 BIG EAST Championships on Monday night at Spire Academy.

Diving
After an intense preliminary session, Nick Graham and Quinn Murtha found themselves back at night for the finals of the men's three-meter board. Against a field of five Georgetown divers and one Villanova diver, the Pirates fought for potentially invaluable points in what could be a close title battle for the men. After an early slip-up from Murtha, Graham continued to wage a title battle against his BIG EAST foes. After his final dive, Graham finished with a score of 367.75 and sat atop of the standings. However, Villanova's Nicholas Jubilee pushed Graham to second on the final dive, earning just under three points more than the freshman.

Swimming
In the opening race of the night, the 800 freestyle relay, the Pirates entered the event as the top seed in lane four. After narrowly missing out on breaking the program record at the Bucknell Invitational, the program's mid-season meet, the lineup of Balint Marosi, Michael Klimaszewski, Jaden Bunt and Kevin Cary were out to prove that the program record was destined to belong to this quartet. The lone difference from the earlier iteration of this lineup was swapping Marosi in as the opener and moving Klimaszewski to the second leg. That small change made a massive difference, however.

After Marosi brought the Pirates to the wall even after the first 200 yards, Klimaszewski dove into the pool. In his eight laps, the junior from London, England, put up an inhuman time of 1:35.55. That split was over two seconds faster than any other non-Seton Hall swimmer did in the entire event. With a hefty multi-body length lead, the Pirates cruised their way to a BIG EAST title and a program-record time of 6:27.12, nearly five seconds faster than the prior record.

The Hall closed the night with the 200 medley relay, the team's most vulnerable relay event of the championship. Chris Jackson lead off the relay with a strong split to keep the Pirates within touching distance. After him, Ben Endersby drew the team even in the fight for the lead. After playing a key role in the earlier relay, Klimaszewski returned to the pool powered out another immense relay split, leaving The Hall mere tenths off of Xavier's race-leading pace with two laps left. With it all to play for, Toma Adam dove into the pool looking to claw back the difference and earn the Pirates' second victory of the night. While he found nearly a tenth, Adam would fall short of the comeback and the Pirates found themselves in second place at the wall. The consolation prize, however, was breaking the school record. With a time of 1:27.59, this Pirate quartet bested the prior record by exactly 0.30 seconds.

Heading into the second day of competition, the Pirates find themselves in second place with 115 points overall.

Georgetown – 136 points
Seton Hall – 115
Villanova – 89
Xavier – 72
Providence – 56

Up Next
The Pirates return to action on Tuesday with Day Two of the BIG EAST Championships. Events include the 500 Free, 200 IM, 50 Free and 200 Free Relay.