Jan. 26, 2002

Columbus, Ohio - The Fighting Illini women's swimming and diving team hit the road Saturday, traveling to Columbus, Ohio, for a dual meet against the Ohio State Buckeyes and returned home with a rare outcome - a 150-150 tie in the final team standings. Both teams won eight events, splitting the relays and taking seven individual events apiece.

"I'm very pleased with the way we swam," Illinois Head Coach Sue Novitsky said. "We ended up in a tie, which is very rare, but with it going back and forth all day it was a fun meet to swim, and the team swam much better than they did last week so I'm pleased about that."

Crystal McAdam and Ilkay Dikmen were both double winners for the Illini, McAdam in the 500 and 1000 freestyles and Dikmen in the 100 and 200 breaststrokes. McAdam set lifetime bests in her two events, clocking a 10:07.85 in the 1000 free to move into third place on Illinois' all-time list, and a 4:58.03 in the 500 free to break into the top 10 list at No. 10. Dikmen's winning time of 2:18.95 in the 200 breast set an OSU pool record, while she also won the 100 in a time of 1:04.64.

Other individual winners for Illinois included Jessica Aveyard in the 200 back (2:01.61), Alison Czmarko in the 100 back (57.57) and Astrid Matthias in the 100 fly (57.96). Illinois' 200 medley relay team of Czmarko, Dikmen, Matthias and Braun also won their race in a time of 1:46.86.

Illinois returns to competition next weekend, traveling to the Big Ten Quad Meet at Purdue University to take on three ranked Big Ten teams.