Florida’s goal is to win a national championship.
The team views every practice and every event along the way as preparation on the road to the NCAA Championship meet.
The All-Florida Invitational was a grueling event held over three days that included, for each event, preliminary heats in the morning and a final swim in the evening to decide a winner.
“I’m really tired right now, but it’ll help us in the long run,” said freshman Matt Elliott, who excelled in the format, notching three wins and one second-place result as an individual.
“It helps show us the type of shape we need to be in later in the season.”
Last weekend’s meet in the O’Connell Center provided a unique opportunity for the Gators to prepare for the NCAA Championships in a more focused way.
Although the meet was against competition that isn’t considered championship-caliber, the event’s format gave the Gators a taste of the grind they will face in March, as well as the urgency necessary in every race to succeed in February.
A maximum of three swimmers from each team could qualify for an event’s final heat, an aspect of the meet that made every race, even the preliminaries, carry a sense of urgency for competitors.
“We had a few places where we qualified our top six,” coach Gregg Troy said. “That puts a lot of pressure on our team to be very good in the morning.
”[Instead of] spending all year badgering them about where we want to be at the end of the year and how tough it is to be good at the NCAA meet, we put them in a dynamic where they have to get up and go.”
Troy felt this was especially important for freshmen swimmers who are used to easier preliminary competition in high school meets. He was pleased with how those swimmers, competing in their first collegiate meet, responded to the challenge.
“We had nine freshman guys stand up and swim extremely well,” Troy said. “We’ve still got some holes, but the future is bright.”
