The UF men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams (M: 2-1, 2-1 Southeastern conference; W: 3-1, 3-1 SEC) lost their first meets of the season Friday in Athens, Georgia, against the Bulldogs.
But the good news is they don’t have to wait long to get back in the pool and rebound from their initial losses.
After the men’s and women’s teams lost to Georgia 174.5-122.5 and 176-119 respectively in their last meet, the Gators will swim again on Saturday against a deep Minnesota team (M: 3-1, 1-1 Big Ten Conference; W: 4-0, 2-0 Big Ten) in the O’Connell Center Natatorium.
When UF faced UGA, the Bulldogs raced better overall throughout the meet, winning eight of the first nine events. Florida’s loss came to Georgia men’s and women’s squads which are ranked fourth and second in the country.
Coach Gregg Troy knew his teams had their work cut out for them in Athens, but the Gators committed too many mistakes against an the Bulldogs.
"We had the opportunity to have a good competition on Friday ... swam a really good Georgia team," Troy said. "We didn’t swim quite as well as what we would have liked but it gave us the opportunity to see what had happened in the two weeks prior. We had two great weeks of training. We are very pleased of how well the athletes responded race wise but we just made too many mistakes. We had little things that held us back and we are just not gonna swim well like a team like Georgia and make those kind of mistakes. We just lost too many close races."
There were some bright spots for the Gators. Freshman Caeleb Dressel for the men and junior Natalie Hinds for the women won both their respective sprint races, the 50-yard (Hinds 22.55 seconds, Dressel: 20.06) and 100-yard freestyle (Hinds: 49.37, Dressel: 44.35). Florida also lost a bunch of close races that could have gone the either way.
But Troy said the race and the close loss was a good learning experience for its younger swimmers.
"All the men’s freestyle events, everyone of them were close. Tremendous races the whole way," said Troy. "It’s good to have that opportunity this time of year. On the women’s side, we still have some injures and we’re not very deep. The women across the top swam real well, credit Natalie Hinds, how well she raced and even though Jessica Thielmann didn’t win, she raced tremendously tough. On the men’s Caeleb Dressel was fantastic in the short freestyle and all the other ones were close, we just didn’t win the close races."
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