With the Southeastern Conference behind them, the UF men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams are ready to look toward the NCAA Championships.
The Gators have two tune-ups left before the women hit the water in West Lafayette, Ind., on March 18, and the men take the pool in Columbus, Ohio, on March 25.
They’ll compete in the first of those today through Sunday at the Florida Swimming Senior Championships in Orlando.
Following the SEC Championship Meet in which the men’s and women’s teams both finished second, Florida will use the meet to shift its focus toward the national scene.
That means getting as many swimmers qualified for the NCAA meet as possible, as well as developing younger swimmers for depth.
For this reason, the Gators won’t bring a full roster to Orlando. They’ll focus on swimmers who failed to qualify at the SEC Championship and those who didn’t compete at all.
“We’ve been really fortunate here at Florida to bring along some younger athletes that are a little less experienced and we take maybe a few more then some other teams in the country do,” UF coach Gregg Troy said. “But some of those people become the Conor Dwyers and the Jeff Raymonds. Jeff Raymond has scored a lot of points for us. They’re the ones that really help us down the road, so we’re developing.”
Dwyer notched five NCAA automatic-qualifying times at the SEC Championship, two as an individual and three as part of relay teams. Overall, the Gators had five qualifying times on the women’s side and 13 from the men, and they’ll be looking for more this weekend.
By having more swimmers earn low NCAA provisional-qualifying times or even automatic-qualifying times, they’ll not only increase the chance of individual swimmers doing well, they’ll better the odds of placing high as a team at the national meet.
“On the men’s side, we have four or five guys that are kind of one-event guys,” Troy said. “We don’t take them to conference meet but they’re specialists, maybe in the distance freestyle or they’re really good in the butterfly but not quite as well-rounded. This is their opportunity because they can still get to the NCAAs.
“We think we might have two or three more become standard and a couple of them can even score at the NCAAs, so it’s really important for us team-wise, those couple of extra points. We’ve got to give them a great chance to see if they can qualify.”
Former Olympian Gemma Spofforth tallied three of the women’s squad’s five automatic-qualifying times at the SEC meet, but Troy said he was happy with his swimmers’ performances overall.
“The women did a great job of fighting last weekend,” Troy said. “We have somewhere between ten and fifteen qualified for the NCAA meet. I feel really good about our chances moving forward that we’re going to be outstanding at the NCAA meet. We were certainly not pleased about being second, but we were really happy with the performances.”
