The Florida women’s swimming and diving team returns to the pool this weekend as it sets to start its season at home against Arkansas on Saturday at 11 a.m.
Coach Gregg Troy leads the team once again after coming off a 14th consecutive top-10 finish in last year’s NCAA Championships, where the Gators placed sixth for the second year in a row.
Florida lost a combined 49 All-American honors on their roster with the departures of Elizabeth Beisel, Alicia Mathieu, Ellese Zalewski and Hilda Luthersdottir. These four accounted for 10 Florida school records.
Now looking ahead to this year, Troy is looking to get the season started with his new bunch.
"Always exciting starting a new season and especially coming off the summer we had," Troy said. "We had a good summer for both the men and the women. Our training was good this summer. We had a lot of people compete internationally and do exceptionally well so we feel good about this year as we’re looking forward."
The men’s team does not begin its season until next week at the Pinch a Penny All Florida Invitational, so Troy’s focus this week will be on the women’s squad.
And this year’s team is encompassed with youth — with nine freshmen and redshirt freshmen compared to just three seniors.
But Troy is looking forward to seeing what kind of team he has.
"It’s real exciting, the beginning-of-the-year training has been outstanding and with young people, they’ve been very enthusiastic and on the numbers," Troy said. "So we’re looking forward to seeing what we have and get a little forecast for this year."
With the loss of Beisel, Mathieu, Zalewski and Luthersdottir, this new-look Gators squad will be looking for new leadership within its young team, and Troy did not seem too concerned with finding those leaders.
"It’s hard to replace them first thing right away," Troy said. "From a leadership standpoint and experience, it’s not even the leadership as much as the experience. Seeing how these freshmen will respond, they’ll develop some leadership skills themselves and what we’ve seen from them already is a tremendous interest in one another in what they’re doing. I think leadership could come from all areas, it doesn’t just have to be seniors."
Among the freshmen Troy will rely on is Chelsea Lawson, who is from Fife, Scotland.
Lawson won the 200-meter backstroke at the Scottish National Championships in 2014 and is the Scottish record-holder in the 200m back for the 17-year-old age group. Other freshmen include Ally Donahue, a Tampa native who graduated high school early and was ranked as the No. 15 recruit in Florida in the class of 2014 according to CollegeSwimming.com, and Paige Scheriger out of Hendersonville, Tenn., who qualified for the 2012 U.S. Olympics Trials in Omaha, Neb.
Coach Troy also talked about how he felt starting this season earlier than most, having a dual meet against Arkansas a week before the Invitational.
"It puts you in a little disadvantage compared to where we’ve been in the past," Troy said. "When you start with that Invitational, you swim two events and see everyone in a lot of different places so you really know what people are capable of. This one, we’ll be a little blind in some events in what we can actually do and how these freshmen will respond in back-to-back swims in a dual meet. It will help us in what we will need to address next week in the Invitational."
Follow Aaron Friedland on Twitter @aafriedland
Elizabeth Beisel swims during Florida's 173.5-124.5 win against Auburn on Jan. 25 in the O'Connell Center.
