South Carolina wins 8 total events in loss at Auburn over weekend
13 blue and orange national championship banners, displayed next to 23 SEC championship banners greeted the South Carolina swim and dive team as it arrived in Auburn this past weekend.
The Tigers, whose men’s and women’s teams are both ranked in the top-20 of the country, beat the Gamecocks 170-124 in the men’s meet and 177-118 in the women’s.
A perennial top-tier program, Auburn carried a distinct home-pool advantage this weekend in their wins.
“There is a lot of history and at times it can be intimidating. We talked about that before we went down there,” coach McGee Moody said. “You have the environment where everybody is for them and when they win the place goes crazy and when we pull out an event, it’s crickets.”
The men’s meet was kicked off with Marwan El Kamash edging out the competition by .16 of a second and winning the 1,000 m freestyle.
The team won eight events total, including victories from senior Michael Flach and junior Alex Vance. Junior Michael Covert and freshman Kevin Leithold came up just short with second place finishes.
In the women’s meet, all events were won by upperclassmen with junior Victoria Mitchell and seniors Abby Galbreath and Amanda Rutqvist winning their events.
“We won some close races so that’s good. I’m happy to see that,” Moody said. “A lot of our men and women executed their race strategies, which is a good thing going into SEC [Championships] because mentally they’re engaged, but physically it wasn’t there. We won some close races and they executed the way they needed to execute each race perfectly.”
While statistically the men’s meet was closer than the women’s, Moody says that those numbers can be misleading.
“I think our men were stronger in areas where Auburn was weaker. In some cases, some of our women’s strongest events were some of Auburn’s better events,” Moody said. “That was the difference in a lot of cases where our guys were strong in areas where Auburn was not and our women had to work a little bit harder in areas to get the points we were expecting to get.”
The team is using this weekend to springboard them into the SEC Championships, which are in two weeks in Athens, Ga.
Moody preached that in preparation for the Auburn dual meet.
“Obviously we were going down there to win a meet, but it was our last opportunity to get up and race before we go to the SEC Championships. We talked a lot about going down there and swimming the way we needed to swim, holding the times they needed to hold. We put a lot of emphasis on winning the meet and doing the best we could with it.”
Moody believes that while the team lost this weekend, the experience them will benefit them going into the SEC Championships.
“You get down to Athens and it won’t catch you off guard,” Moody said. “The last people you saw are the ones you are going to see in the finals. I think it helps. That’s the fastest team we’ve faced in a dual meet all year, so it definitely sets us up to go into Athens to know what to expect and know the competition that we have and knowing what we are going to overcome.”