March Madness does not only pertain to college basketball—it also proved true for three Rensselaer student-athletes who represented the Institute in their respective sports on the highest level. Junior Tyler Yeastedt qualified for and competed in the NCAA Men’s Division III Indoor Track & Field Championship on March 13, while freshmen Danielle Sauve and Shanny Lin did the same in the Women’s Swimming & Diving Championship the following week.
Top to bottom: Danielle Sauve, Shanny Lin, and Tyler Yeastedt.
Lin, an electrical engineering major from El Paso, Texas, enjoyed the most success of the three when she finished fourth in the entire nation in the 200 butterfly, swimming the event in a school record time of 2:02.19 to earn National All-America honors.
Lin qualified for the finals by placing sixth in the preliminary with a school record time of 2:02.48. She broke her own mark, which was previously 2:03.37. The swimming championships were held in her home state of Texas at the Conroe ISD Natatorium in Shenandoah.
The 200 butterfly at the NCAA Championship was the third event for Lin, who also swam in the 200 IM in 2:10.73 on Wednesday and the 100 fly in 57.57 on Thursday. She missed the finals in both events.
Sauve, a native of Walpole, Mass., also swam in three events at the national championship meet. The engineering major finished her first NCAA Championship Meet by swimming in the 100 freestyle, posting a time of 53.85 in the preliminaries. She also swam in the 500 free, finishing the preliminaries in a time of 5:07.66, and the 200 free in 1:53.42 in the preliminaries.
Yeastedt, a thrower, traveled to Winston-Salem, N.C., for the indoor track & field national championship, where he finished 14th in Division III. The Merrimac, Mass., native maxed out with a throw of 16.50m (54-feet, 1.75-inches).
The aerospace engineering major qualified for the NCAA Championships with a throw of 18.31 meters, which put him 11th in the 15-person field. That season-best throw came in his victory in the weight throw at the New York State Championship Meet, defeating 20 other competitors, on Feb. 27. He was the NYSCTC Field Performer of the Year as well as the Liberty League Field Performer of the Year.
Yeastedt, Sauve, and Lin are all Dean’s List students. They are coached by Colin Tory and Shannon O’Brien, respectively.