For a top-10 team, the Gators may be one of the biggest underdogs competing at their upcoming meet.
As the No. 9 Florida women’s swimming and diving team begins its four-day NCAA championship competition today in Atlanta, there are still some doubts as to how much of a title threat the Gators are.
Nine UF swimmers will be competing across 14 different events at the NCAA meet. Compared to most teams competing, the Gators will be playing with a short deck of competitors. But while the Gators may be lacking in quantity, coach Gregg Troy believes his team is not short on quality.
"Most of the teams are somewhere between nine and 15 (swimmers)," Troy said. "Having numbers at that meet isn’t as important as having people there swimming very, very well."
In addition to the swimmers participating, the Gators also received a much-needed boost when senior diver Kahlia Warner qualified for the NCAA meet in all three diving competitions in last week’s NCAA diving zone event.
But even so, if UF expects to compete for the program’s third national championship, or at least extend its 15-year streak of finishing in the top 10 at the NCAA meet, it will need to significantly improve from where they were a month ago.
In the team’s last meet at the Southeastern Conference Championships, the Gators finished sixth overall in a 12-team field. During the five-day meet, the team was unable to capture its first overall swimming victory until the final day when senior Natalie Hinds captured the SEC title in the 50-yard freestyle.
In total, the Gators won three individual SEC titles, but were far from being a championship threat to overall winner Texas A&M.
The Gators will begin the NCAA meet today by competing in the 800-yard freestyle relay. In last year’s NCAA meet, the Gators finished 10th overall in the 800 with a time of 7:04.48.
At the SEC meet, the Gators swam an overall time of 7:03.44. Even though the latter time was good enough to place podium in the SEC meet, Troy and his team know they will need to be faster in Atlanta if they expect to finish at or near the top of the leaderboards.
"We’re going to have to compete better than what we did at the conference meet," Troy said.
Contact Sean Doty at sdoty@alligator.org and follow him on Twitter @TheRealSeanDoty.
Natalie Hinds races in the 100 meter butterfly during Florida’s meet against Auburn on Jan. 23, 2016, in the O’Connell Center.
