As Florida’s swimming and diving team prepares to host its final home meet of the season against Auburn’s No. 7 ranked men’s team and No. 10 ranked women’s team, Gators head coach Gregg Troy is focused on shaving some seconds off this weekend.
"The whole thing right now is we have got to get faster," Troy said. "We are not as fast as we need to be. We need to get faster."
One reason for the team’s desire to improve their times is the fact that this will be the last opportunity until March for Florida swimmers to qualify for the Olympic trials.
In their last meet against Florida State, sophomores Caeleb Dressel (100-meter butterfly) and Jan Switkowski (200-meter butterfly) along with redshirt-junior Georgia Hohmann (100-meter and 200-meter backstrokes) all posted times fast enough to earn a spot in the Olympic trials.
To date, a total of seven swimmers from both teams have qualified for the NCAA Championships in March.
While swimmers on both teams want to improve their individual times this weekend, Troy believes that if the Gators focus too much on aiming for faster times, they will place unnecessary pressure on themselves.
"It’s about having fun and racing," Troy said. "If we take care of the process and just work on getting better and improving on the little things, we’ll go faster."
Saturday’s meet will also be the final home meet for 16 swimmers from both Florida teams.
Among those seniors are Natalie Hinds and Jessica Thielmann.
Hinds has qualified for the NCAA Championships in the 100-meter freestyle event and is currently pending qualification in four other events, while Thielmann is currently pending qualification in three events. Both will be honored before the start of the meet along with UF’s other seniors.
This Saturday’s meet will not be an easy swim for the Gators.
Even though the Auburn men’s team fell to No. 1 ranked Texas in their last meet on Jan. 7, the Longhorns only managed to pull off a slim 156-136 victory over the Tigers.
Meanwhile, the Auburn women’s team will be swimming with momentum after easily defeating Arkansas 142-95 this past Saturday.
"It’s just a great opportunity for us to see a little higher level of competition from what we have seen so far this semester," Troy said.
The Gators have won their last three meets, dating back to Nov. 6 against South Carolina.
While both teams will be challenged against a formidable conference opponent, coach Troy and his team are looking forward to a competitive senior day matchup.
"It’s nice to see them have a chance to go out at home against a good competitor and sometimes a senior meet is against a team that isn’t as competitive," Troy said.
"We like to see one as competitive and I think that adds more to the competition."
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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
