From February 12-15, the Men’s and Women’s Swim Teams participated in the 2026 Middle Atlantic Conference Championship in York, Pennsylvania. The four-day meet, featuring 11 colleges, marked the season’s final, biggest, and most significant competition, determining the MAC Champions. Both the Stevens Men’s and Women’s teams rose to the occasion, seizing the conference titles and concluding their season as champions.
The Ducks started day one with a bang, immediately putting four swimmers in the A final of the first event, the men’s 500 freestyle. Sophomore Karem Dogruer and freshmen Yusuf Tokuz and Sebastien Nappi all raced well, but junior Patrick Cortelli placed highest with a silver medal. Following this, sophomore Eszter Kiss took first place in the women’s 500 freestyle — the first of many medals for her.
Freshman Cooper Moffat and senior Will Stibor earned bronze medals in the 200 individual medley and 50 freestyle, respectively. Sophomore Delaney Klaus earned the second silver medal of the meet in the 50 free. The most significant event of the day for the Ducks came in the women’s 200 medley relay. Kiss and Klaus were joined by seniors Natalia Brunetti and Adrianna Bertolotti to form a relay team that not only won gold but broke the MAC Championship record with a time of 1:45.16.
Day two of the championship was even more eventful than the first. Stevens started off the day by finishing in second place in both the men’s and women’s 200 freestyle relays. Another highlight of the day came from sophomore Ethan Emerton, who won the men’s 400 individual medley by a whopping eight seconds. On the other hand, in the women’s 400 individual medley, Stevens may not have gotten first place, but they had five swimmers from second to sixth on the podium.
In the 100 butterfly, senior Deo Bove finished in second place, and Brunetti finished in first place in the men’s and women’s finals, respectively. Kiss earned the Ducks’ first NCAA B cut since 2018 in the 200 freestyle, alongside breaking the MAC record and taking the gold. The women’s 200 medley relay team returned for the 400 medley relay, finished first, and impressively broke another record that had stood since 2019. In this relay, Klaus also posted an NCAA B cut in her 100 backstroke.
On the third day, Stevens took home more than 10 medals in the eight finals that took place. In the first events of the day, Bove and Cortelli took silver and bronze in the men’s 200 butterfly, while Brunetti and sophomore Hanna Matheson finished first and second for the women. Klaus won and broke another record (from 2014) in the 100 backstroke with a time of 55.85. The last event of the day was the women’s 800 freestyle relay, which was won by a four-woman team of Kiss, Klaus, sophomore Megan Koek, and senior Gabby Sokolik.
The final day of the MAC started off with the mile, which requires swimmers to swim a brutal 70 lengths of the pool. Moffat won the men’s mile in an impressive race with a personal best time of 16:26.73, winning by 17 seconds. Emerton finished first in the men’s 200 backstroke while senior Lukas Mikulenas did the same in the 200 breaststroke. Stevens took the final victory of the championship as they took home the gold in the 400 freestyle relay.
As you can see, this was a very successful championship for the Ducks. Medals were won, records were broken, Kiss and Klaus achieved NCAA cuts, and Cooper Moffat was even named the 2026 rookie of the year. All the aforementioned results, and many that I did not get to mention, led to both the men’s and women’s teams being crowned MAC champions. This marks back-to-back championships for the women’s team, and the men have been MAC Champions for seven consecutive years.
