Fast starts have been a motto for Florida swimming coach Gregg Troy all season.
Most of the regular-season victories for the No. 9-ranked UF women’s swimming and diving team can be attributed to jumping out to an early lead. But after a slow start on Wednesday, the Gators will have much ground to make up on the leaders.
Wednesday marked Day 1 of the four-day-long NCAA championship meet. With only one event taking place on the first day — the 800-yard freestyle relay — it was a solid opportunity for the Gators to make a strong statement against their 26 adversaries.
A 16th-place finish was anything but strong.
"We put in a lot of work leading up to this race and we didn’t finish where we would have liked to," Troy said in a release.
"We thought we could have gone faster. We showed up and swam the best of our abilities but it just wasn’t there today."
Florida’s quartet for Wednesday’s relay consisted of seniors Natalie Hinds, Jessica Thielmann and Ashlee Linn, along with sophomore Amelia Maughan.
Maughan opened the relay for the Gators, finishing the first leg with a time of 1:47.46. Hinds and Thielmann soon followed, each swimmer completing their 200-yard splits at 1:45.05 and 1:46.72, respectively.
Linn, the anchor for Florida, closed the relay with a split time of 1:45.06, nearly matching Hinds for fastest on the team. With a total time of 7:04.79, the Gators finished fifth in their heat race and 16th overall.
Aside from finishing nearly 13 seconds slower than overall winner Georgia, the Gators clocked in 2.84 seconds slower than their qualifying time (7:01.95) and 1.35 seconds slower than their third-place time (7:03.44) at the Southeastern Conference Championship meet last month.
UF’s lapse from its qualifying round was the difference between finishing inside the top 12 and finishing outside the top 15.
The Gators have five of their remaining 13 swimming events taking place today.
And along with the five races, senior diver and SEC champion Kahlia Warner will compete in the 1-meter diving event.
Today’s events could be a crucial turning point or a morale breaker for Florida.
Aside from Warner, the Gators will need to pick up the pace if they wish to extend their NCAA top-10 finishing streak to a 16th straight season.
Contact Sean Doty at sdoty@alligator.org and follow him on Twitter @TheRealSeanDoty.
Teammates celebrate with Natalie Hinds after her leg of the 400 meter freestyle relay during Florida’s meet against Auburn on Jan. 23, 2016, in the O’Connell Center.
