Florida State Releases 2015-16 Schedule

Florida State swimming and diving has released its schedule for the 2015-16 season, with a bit of a surprise in the fact that they won’t swim any meets at Georgia Tech before the postseason. Georgia Tech will, however, be hosting the FSU swimmers at the NCAA championships for both men and women in 2016.

“Having NCAA’s at Georgia Tech could be an advantage for us,” said Bradley. “It’s close. We’ve competed at that pool in the past a lot and ACC’s were there last year and it’s fast. But we’ve got to put in the work up front in order to get as many kids there as possible.”

The Seminoles will start that work at the All-Florida Invite from September 18-20. The meet will be held in Gainesville, Florida, where in-state rivals will gather at the University of Florida for a prelims-finals meet. Last year at this invite, the Florida State women fell to FGCU for the first time. They’ll be looking for redemption there this season.

Their next competition will be at home in Tallahassee on October 3. The University of Minnesota men and women will travel for the first ever dual meet between these teams. Following that meet, the women will travel to Dallas for the SMU Invite on October 16-17.

The Seminole men will rejoin them in competition in North Carolina on October 23-24. First, they’ll head to Durham to face off with Duke, making it their first ACC matchup, and Queens, the reigning NCAA Division II champion, in a tri meet. Queens will be without their star swimmer Matt Josa, who will be taking a redshirt year in the lead up to Olympic Trials.

The next day, they compete against NC State in Raleigh. This is another inter-conference meet and a chance to see how the Seminole men stack up against a top 10 team from last year’s NCAAs. The NC State men are also the defending ACC champions.

On November 6-7, FSU will have another meet at home with the Florida Southern men and women and the FGCU women. Last season, FGCU beat the Seminoles in their dual meet for the first time in program history. Florida State will look to come out on top this year in their last dual of the fall.

The team will have a month off from racing before their mid-season invite. This year, they’ll be racing at the Georgia Invite on December 4-6. This is a bit of a change, as they’ve historically competed at the Georgia Tech Invitational as well before travelling to Athens.

To get the spring started, FSU will compete in a tri meet against FIU and Indian River State College on Dec. 15. They then travel to Gainesville again on January 2 for a dual meet with the University of Florida. The Gator men and women were both top 10 teams at last year’s NCAAs, and the men are the defending SEC Champions. This has always been a big college rivalry, and they’ll be looking to fight back after both the men and women fell to Florida last season.

To close the regular season, the Seminoles will travel to Auburn, Alabama for a tri meet with Auburn and Wisconsin. This will be a final tune up  and a chance to race some tough competition to test the waters before ACCs.

The women will compete at the ACC Championships first on February 17-20 before the men’s meet on the 24-27. Both the men and women finished 7th last year in their conference meets. This season, the meet will be held in Greensboro, North Carolina. That’s a change of scenery for the meet as it’s usually held at Georgia Tech.

The teams will have a couple of last chance meets to take a few last-minute qualifiers to NCAAs. The women will go to Gainesville, while the men will take their last shot at qualifying in the Georgia Tech Pool.

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The 2016 Women’s NCAA Championships will be held March 17-19, and the Men’s NCAA Championships will occur the week after on March 24-26. They’ll look to build off of the women’s 24th place finish and the men’s 26th place finish from 2014-15.