It came down to the final day of competition at the Ohio State Buckeye Invitational for the Gators men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams.
Florida broke six school records, registered 22 NCAA automatic qualifying times and the women’s team orchestrated a dramatic win during the three-day meet.
The women used wins in four of the six events on Day 3 to secure a four-point victory in front of second-place Virginia.
Although Florida’s men’s team got out to an early lead on Day 1 and had an even better performance on Day 2, Ohio State took the lead on Saturday and held the lead through Sunday.
Of the five individual school records the Gators women set, two belong to senior Hilda Luthersdottir, who dominated the breaststroke events. She made program history with swims in the 100-yard breaststroke (59.55 seconds) and 200-yard breast (2:08.37).
Florida’s 25-year record in the women’s 1,650-yard freestyle was broken Sunday when senior Alicia Mathieu touched the wall at 15:46.17,
“Every day at practice, I look at the record board. That has been my goal since I’ve gotten here,” Mathieu said. “It was a tough swim for me. I felt forced to go out faster than I usually do, but I held on.”
Sophomore Natalie Hinds took down the 100-yard free record that had stood since 2010.
Senior Ellese Zalewski was in on the record-breaking action Saturday with her 51.13 seconds in the 100-yard butterfly.
The women’s 400-yard medley relay squad (3:30.27) grabbed the first school record of the weekend to finish Day 1.
“With our program being in this type of dynamic this early in the season, makes this one of our most successful falls. We weren’t really expecting as much as far as school records,” coach Gregg Troy said. “We had a lot of good performances. We still have some weak areas that we need to address, but overall, this is what you want to see in the fall.”
To compliment the records, UF is getting poised for the postseason with those 22 NCAA ‘A’ cuts it picked up in a meet that Troy said he used to assess his team.
“From the stand point of finding out who we were, we met a lot of our goals this weekend,” Troy said.
Follow Logan McGuire on Twitter @loganjmcguire.
