Men's, women's teams to hit pool at conference meet in Gainesville
All the practices, all the meets, the 10-1 record for the No. 23 men — everything has been building towards this: the SEC Championships in Gainesville, Fla.
Coach McGee Moody and the South Carolina swimming team will compete against every school in the conference in the tournament, which starts today and runs until Saturday.
The swimming team wrapped up its last meet a little over two weeks ago, and has been recovering since then in preparation for the SECs, Moody said.
"The confidence is good. Mentally we're in a good place, and physically they're starting to come around," Moody said. He also said it helped that the last meet the Gamecocks competed in was one of the highlights of the season. "Our last meet against Georgia and Alabama was probably the best team performance we've ever had."
The men's meet will feature seven schools in the top 25, including No. 3 Auburn and No. 5 Florida. On the women's side, there are five, with Georgia ranked highest, at No. 2.
"If you look at the top teams in the conference I'd say you're looking at Florida's men and Georgia's women at the top," Moody said. "There's going to be competition for the top couple of spots, and then it evens out a lot. Who knows what's going to happen after that. We've just got to go in and make sure our races play out the way they're supposed to, hopefully hit a lot of our goals and put a lot of our folks over at the NCAA meet."
Many swimmers use the conference championships as an opportunity to qualifying for the NCAA Championships, held in March. Moody said it is hard to predict who will make the cut, because the qualifying process is constantly changing based on how other swimmers perform.
"I think Amanda [Rutqvist] right now is the most solid in terms of getting an invite to the meet. I would be shocked if she didn't get an invite," Moody said. "Bobby Cave is going to make a pretty strong run. He looks good right now. A lot of things have to fall into place, but there's not really anybody on our team who doesn't stack up right now."
Moody said that South Carolina's strongest event will be the 800m freestyle men's relay. The relay is the first event, so a good performance will help to set the tone for the Gamecocks.
"There's a realistic chance for them to finish top three. And if we finish top three, they'll make the (NCAA) meet. That's just how our conference works," Moody said. "Those relays will kick off the meet for us, so we are going to focus on that first day, but it's not the be-all-end-all. Each individual knows they have their individual role that they have to go out and perform if we're going to be as good as we can as a team."