NIU men’s and women’s swimmers racked up enough points in each group to knock off last year’s champions, and capture first place in the Wheaton Invitational.

The men scored 938 points to beat two-time defending champs, Western Illinois, who scored 665. Among other teams, Wheaton College placed third with 499, Bradley scored 408 for fourth, and Eastern Illinois had 247 for a fifth-place ranking.

“I knew if we did what we supposedly could do, we could pull off a win,” men’s boss Dave Clark said. “We did and we did. It certainly wasn’t as close as I thought it would be, but we had a couple of people swim fast and everyone followed suit.”

The NIU women stole the show by scoring 797, topping last year’s champs Northern Michigan which had 775. Western Illinois placed third with 634, Kenyan College had 591 for fourth, Eastern Illinois placed fifth with 289, and Wheaton College finished last with 258.

The Huskie women came back Saturday to win, after being tied with NMU Friday with 401. NIU women’s coach Mike Burt felt his team had an outstanding performance at this point in the season.

“I think we showed our overall depth and quality by coming back Saturday,” Burt said. “This win was definitely a confidence booster. It tells us we’re where we should be and that we do have a legitimate chance of winning the independent championship meet at the end of the season.”

Freshmen Steve Sanders proved to be the fastest swimmer, breaking a total of four school records. He broke the 200-yard individual medley, the 1,650-yard freestyle, the 1,000-yard swim, and the 400-yard individual medley.

Besides Sanders, the Huskies received first-place finishes from Pat Egan (100-yard breaststroke), Dave Talbot (100-yard butterfly), the 400-yard medley relay (Frank Kupiec, Egan, Talbot, Mike Wheeler), the 800-yard freestyle relay (Sanders, Egan, Talbot, Wheeler) and the 400-yard freestyle relay (Talbot, Egan, Steve Byers, Wheeler).