The Florida men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams completed the third day of the SEC Championships at Texas A&M University Friday.
The men finished the day in first place with 595 points while the women sit in seventh place with 347.5 points.
The men’s team has come roaring back since ending the first day in fourth place. It is now ahead of second place Texas A&M by 68 points.
The most notable performance of the championships for UF was during Day 2 when senior Caeleb Dressel broke the United States record in the 200-yard IM with a time of 1:38.13. The original record was 1:39.38, set by David Nolan of Stanford back in 2015.
"Caeleb's 200 IM was tremendous,” coach Gregg Troy said in a release. “To break the American record by over a second is something really special. He is a special athlete who knows how to focus in.”
The Gators’ men picked up two first-place finishes on Day 3. Senior Jan Switkowski won the 100-yard butterfly with a time of 45:26, beating out Texas A&M’s senior Mauro Castillo Luna by 0.37 seconds. In the last event of the day, sophomore Khader Baqlah won the 200-yard freestyle with a time of 1:31:26. The next closest to him was another Gator, sophomore Maxime Rooney, finishing at 1:32:97.
"We had a good day today,” Troy said. “We started off a little rocky, not positioning people the way we would have liked to position them, but they came back tonight and did a good job with the lanes they had.”
Junior Hannah Burns recorded the best finish for the Florida women’s team, as she finished sixth in the 400-yard IM race.
"The women have been tremendous,” said Troy. “We are light years ahead of where we were a year ago.”
The men will look to add to their lead on Saturday and Sunday while the women will look to make up ground. They trail Texas A&M, Tennessee, Georgia, Auburn, Missouri and Kentucky.
A story from floridagators.com contributed to this report.
Follow Jacob McManamon on Twitter @jmcmanamon97 and contact him at jmcmanamon@alligator.org.
Senior Caeleb Dressel broke the United States record in the 200-yard individual medley by a margin of 1.25 seconds on Thursday.
