The Florida men’s swimming and diving team opened up the SEC portion of the 2009-10 schedule with a 139-104 win over Georgia Friday in the Stephen C. O’Connell Center Natatorium. Led by multiple event wins from senior Shaune Fraser and junior Conor Dwyer, the Gators improved to 3-0 (1-0 SEC) in dual meet action. The Florida women fell to Georgia, 137-104. UF moved to 3-1 (1-1 SEC) in dual meets on the 2009-10 season.
“We had a really strong men’s meet,” head coach Gregg Troy said. “We were really good across the board. We weren’t great at the beginning, but we showed some resilience and had some good swims. We have a small problem in the breaststroke that we’ll address, but we were really impressed with the races from Conor Dwyer, Shaune Fraser and Pholien Systermans.”
The highlight of the meet was a first through fourth sweep of the men’s 200-yard free. Conor Dwyer took first with a 1:37.48. Freshman Pholien Systermans (1:38.82), sophomore Jeff Raymond (1:39.08) and junior Balazs Gercsak (1:39.54) rounded completed the sweep.
The Gators went 1-2-3 in the 200 backstroke event, as senior Roland Rudolf earned first place and recorded an NCAA qualifying mark of 1:45.71, Omar Pinzon placed second (1:46.74) and Brett Fraser came in third (1:49.45).
Florida takes to the pool again Nov. 19-21 when the Gators travel to Atlanta, Ga., for the three-day Georgia Tech Invitational.
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Although the Lady Gators fell short against Georgia, Troy was pleased with the effort he got from his swimmers.
“We competed against a very deep Georgia team today,” head coach Gregg Troy said. “We had a great relay to start the meet, but we were just out-touched at the end. I think that we lost a little drive after that. Georgia started strong in the distance events — they have three world-class distance athletes, and we’re very young in the distance lineup. What was really bright for us is the same few that struggled in the first half stepped it up the second half of the meet. We had some exceptional swims from Jamie Bohunicky and Melani Costa-Schmid and we used Teresa Crippen in some versatile ways and had some good results.”
The Gators host Michigan and Stanford next weekend in a two-day double-dual meet, starting Nov. 6 at 7 p.m. The triangular will continue Saturday from the Stephen C. O’Connell at 8:30 a.m.