The men and women’s swimming and diving team traveled to Durham, North Carolina for a double duel meet with Duke University and Harvard University.
In an attempt to make a splash after a long day of competition, the Gamecocks finished with a 1-3 record.
South Carolina earned a split decision against Duke, with the men winning 158-136, while the women fell to the Blue Devils 165-135.
The Gamecocks had a rough match against Harvard, with both the men and women losing 180-120 and 154-146, respectively.
“I thought that in some areas we swam well,” head coach McGee Moody said. “I thought our distance swimmers performed very well and raced really hard, and I thought in some areas we weren’t as good as we should have been.”
Although they did not have the outcome they would have liked as a team, there were many individuals who stood out and performed well.
Both freshmen Akram Mahmoud and Tomas Peribonio gave strong performances in their distance events. They gave the team a strong start, finishing first and second in the 1000 freestyle with times of 9:13.50 and 9:13.63, respectively, achieving their personal records.
Freshman Nils Wich-Glasen took first place in the 200 breaststroke and broke the pool record at Taishoff Aquatic Pavilion with his time of 1:58.91.
Senior Victoria Mitchell, a strong swimmer for the girls, tried to help the women’s team by winning both the 500 and 1000 freestyle.
Freshman Charlsie Reneski also had a solid swim, giving a strong comeback performance after being down for a while. Overall, the coaches were very pleased by these standouts and many others.
After the meet, the coaches looked for crucial mistakes. Moody said he felt he overlooked what the athletes could actually do. “I think for me as the head coach, I looked at their training and thought they would be at a different place in terms of how they would be able to race after going through the hard training.”
The coaches also said they saw a lack of intensity in their swimmers this past weekend, but said they feel working on this will help the team in the future.
“I think we need to work on our intensity. Every time we hit the water there needs to be a hunger to win,” Moody said. “Normally, they bring it to the table everyday, but it’s something we need to focus on and be better at.”
Moody said he is ready to prepare the team for the upcoming matches in the rest of the season.
“I think we need to learn from our mistakes last weekend where we lacked a little bit of the competitive nature,” Moody said. “We need to get up and be ready to race this weekend. We have to fix the mistakes we made during the races, and as coaches we need to make sure people are in the right places in the right events. It’s just the little things; we didn’t do the little things well last week, and we need to do better at it this week.
The men are now 4-3 and the women 5-4 overall.
Next for the Gamecocks is a home conference match against Missouri Friday, Jan. 12 at noon.