PISCATAWAY, N.J. – The TCNJ men's swimming team's title at the Metropolitan Conference championships was all but assured after a stunning performance on Saturday. That didn't stop the Lions from enjoying a few appetizers on the way to their coronation.

James McChesney shattered the program record with a dazzling performance in the 100 free while Lukas Blach (1650 free) and Shawn Kushner (200 breast) added individual gold medals of their own as TCNJ's staggering four-day performance culminated in the program's first championship at METs since 2015. The Lions racked up 1648.5 team points to outgun runner-up Rowan by almost 200 and claim their 19^th team title at the conference meet, and the first under head coach David Dow.

For their efforts, McChesney was named rookie of the meet and shared co-swimmer of the meet honors with Rowan's Kevin Gilooly, and Dow was recognized as coach of the year. 

Over the course of the weekend, the Lions captured eight individual titles and added two relay golds to their haul. 

McChesney, who already established a new program standard in the 50 free earlier in the weekend, etched his name into the record books again with a blazing 44.46 in the 100 free prelims. That time surpassed Stephen Tarnowski's 44.49 from 2014 for the best in school history, and moved McChesney up to ninth on the Division III performance list.

The sophomore, though, had another big trick up his sleeve. Matched up with Gilooly, who had bested him in the 50 free on Friday night, McChesney put up a mind-boggling 43.81-second time, second-fastest in all of Division III this season and just enough to edge out his Prof rival by .12 seconds.
Andrew Thompson finished fourth in the 100 free (45.37), while Matt Watts (46.55) and Dixon Kahler (47.34) also made the A-final.

Blach was terrific in the 1650 free, finishing with the third-best time in program history at 15:55.09. It was about nine seconds ahead of teammate Ethan Laible (16:04.00) in second, and Conrad Hoody claimed fourth at 16:15.77, both joining Blach in B-cut territory.

Kushner completed his breaststroke double with a big win in the 200, touching in 2:01.78 to outpace Rowan's Greg Cann by more than a second. Kushner's time is third on TCNJ's all-time performance list. Ryan VanDeVeen finished fourth in 2:04.51 and Patrick Sullivan landed in seventh (2:07.86).

Andrew Walter finished runner-up in the 200 back with an NCAA B-cut mark of 1:49.72, good for third all-time at TCNJ. Ryan Higgins, last night's 400 IM champion, placed fourth in a B-cut clocking of 1:49.85, while Sean Rave (1:55.46) and Ryan Heerema (1:58.04) were seventh and eighth, respectively, in the A-final.

Jonah Herring finished fifth in the 200 fly (1:56.14), and Jack Marble took eighth (2:00.08).

Kahler, Watts, Thompson, and McChesney finished the meet with a second-place finish in the 400 free relay, posting the fourth-best time in school history (2:59.65).