Heading into the weekend with just two dual meets remaining in the season, the Florida swimming and diving teams looked to make a strong push to qualify their athletes for the NCAA Championship.
They staked their claim against Auburn on Saturday.
The No. 7 Florida men’s team (5-1, 3-1 Southeastern Conference) defeated No. 6 Auburn (3-4, 3-1 SEC), 158-142.
The No. 8 UF women’s swimming and diving team (5-2, 4-2 SEC) defeated the No. 10 Tigers (6-2-1, 3-1-1 SEC), 152-148.
Overall, Florida won 21 top finishes out of the 32 events and registered several NCAA ‘B’ provisional marks from the meet.
Freshman Caeleb Dressel finished first in the 50- and 100-yard freestyle, with times of 19.61 seconds and 43.88 seconds, respectively.
Junior Jessica Theilmann finished first in the 200-, 500- and 1,000-yard freestyle events at 1:48.79, 4:47.24 and 9:43.17, respectively.
For women’s diving, junior Kahlia Warner received the highest total points with 322.58.
Auburn senior Fraser McKean led the men’s diving portion, as he received a meet-high 385.35 points.
"Both squad’s showed a lot of character in how they raced today," coach Gregg Troy said in a release. "We had a variety of people step up to score in key situations for us. We still have some technical issues to address but we are moving in the right direction."
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Freshman Caeleb Dressel jumps into the pool at the start of the 200-yard breaststroke event during Day 3 of the 2014 Pinch A Penny Invitational