Swimmers strive to hit qualifying times for NCAA Championships
After a successful outing at the SEC Championships, the USC men’s and women’s swimming teams are shifting their focus to the NCAA Championships, which begin in mid-March.
At SECs, the women finished sixth overall while the men finished seventh. In addition, nine school records were broken, and USC had its first ever women’s champion.
“We swam better than we ever have before as a program,” said coach McGee Moody. “At any point in my coaching career, there’s never been a team I’ve been associated with that has performed across the board like this one did this weekend.”
Amanda Rutqvist became the first woman from South Carolina to win an event at the finals, and she did so as a freshman. She won the 200-yard breaststroke by two seconds, breaking a 10-year SEC record in the process.
“One thing we’ve always talked about is how we can define winning and let everybody on this team see what it takes to go win a championship,” Moody said. “The work ethic that she has, the commitment that she’s shown ... it shows everyone else on the team that, one, we can do this here. And two, it shows them exactly what it takes to get to that point. It’s special and something we will always remember here. It’s the first time but not the last.”
This weekend is the Last Chance Meet, held in Athens, Ga. As the name conveys, the meet represents the last opportunity for swimmers to qualify for NCAAs. Moody said South Carolina is sending eight swimmers to the meet.
South Carolina has 37 provisional qualifiers, while Rutqvist is the sole automatic qualifier as of now. The swimmers who qualified provisionally will find out whether or not they are invited to the NCAAs in about a week, depending on how well other swimmers around the country perform this weekend. Moody said practices are split, with different groups practicing different things. The first and most important group consists of the swimmers who provisionally qualified for the NCAAs.
“For the NCAA people, which is obviously our number one focus right now, they’re going to go almost on a complete training phase again,” Moody said.
Moody said that each group of swimmers has a different training plan, so getting everyone prepared is difficult.
“It gets to be really, really fine-tuned at this point,” Moody said. “This is the hardest part of the year, because it really does take a lot of attention to detail with the training.”
The second group is composed of the eight heading to the Last Chance Meet. Moody said USC is focusing on getting a relay team qualified, because doing so would increase the number of events USC could to compete in.
Jay Warner is one of the Gamecocks going to the Last Chance Meet. He will attempt to lower his 100m backstroke time.
“They’ll take probably the top 20,” Moody said. “He’s sitting right at about the spot that got invited last year, right on that bubble. Who knows what way it’s going to go this year.”