Kline Sparks Cal Poly on Final Day of Pac-10 Championships

LONG BEACH, Calif. -- Cal Poly senior Peter Kline placed 11th in the 200 backstroke and swam the first leg on the Mustangs' 400 freestyle relay team which broke a school record on the final day of competition in the Pacific-10 Conference Men's Swimming and Diving Championships on Saturday night at the Belmont Plaza Olympic Pool.

Kline (pictured above) surpassed the NCAA B Standard in the 200 backstroke prelims at 1:45.98 and lowered his season-best time in the consolation final to 1:45.67.

He then teamed with Aaron McKinnon, David LaFlamme and Chase Nick to break the school record in the 400 freestyle relay as the Mustangs placed sixth in 2:58.66. The same foursome held the old mark of 2:59.33, set in 2010.

Cal Poly, which set six school records in the four-day meet, finished seventh in the final team standings, 26 points behind sixth-place UC Santa Barbara. Stanford claimed the Pac-10 men's team title with 911 points, followed by California at 864.

Mustang freshman Konrad Antoniuk placed eighth in the 1,650 freestyle Saturday with an NCAA B Standard qualifying time of 15:23.24, a season best. Matthew Waggoner was 16th in 15:43.59 while Adrian Brynnel was 18th in 15:47.17.

Curtis Lin (1:51/49) and Drew Casier (1:55.68) placed 17th and 18th, respectively, in the 200 butterfly while Nick finished 24th in the 100 freestyle at 45.20. Nick posted a season-best time of 45.01 in the prelims.

In the 200 breaststroke, brothers Joshua Cutts and Zachary Cutts placed 18th and 19th, respectively, with season-best times of 2:02.95 and 2:03.43.

Competing in the Pacific-10 Conference Men's Swimming and Diving Championships for the first time, Cal Poly's best finish of the meet came from Kline on Friday night with a second-place finish in the 400 individual medley. His school-record time of 3:45.91 is the 11th best in the nation, qualifying him automatically for the NCAA Division I National Championships.

Nick twice broke the 200 freestyle record en route to a 14th-place finish (1:37.48) while LaFlamme placed 15th in the 100 backstroke with a school-record time of 48.52 seconds. LaFlamme also posted the 18th-fastest prelim time in the 100 butterfly of 48.87, but scratched in the finals to concentrate on the 100 backstroke.

Cal Poly's 400 medley relay quartet of Kline, Richards, LaFlamme and Nick missed the school record by just .13 of a second, but placed fifth and surpassed the NCAA B Standard with a time of 3:15.58. LaFlamme's 100 backstroke record set earlier in the evening did not last long as Kline's backstroke leg in the medley relay of 48.25 seconds will go into the record book instead.

On Thursday, Kline and Antoniuk were place winners in consolation finals. Kline broke the school record and placed 12th in the 200 individual medley, surpassing the NCAA B Standard with a time of 1:46.89. Antoniuk swam a season-best 4:27.79 in the prelims of the 500 freestyle, then came back a few hours later to place 14th in the finals, clocked in 4:28.66. His prelim time was .14 of a second shy of the school record, but surpassed the NCAA B Standard.

Cal Poly placed sixth in the 200 medley relay Wednesday night while the 800 freestyle relay foursome was disqualified. Kline, Richards, Lin and McKinnon were on the 200 medley relay team.

The Mustangs competed in the Big West Conference since the 1996-97 season, but the Big West discontinued the sport following the departure of Cal State Northridge last spring, reducing the number of schools competing in men's swimming to four.