Big 12 Male Swimmer of the Week: Jimmy Feigen (Texas)
Big 12 Female Swimmer of the Week: Leah Gingrich (Texas)
Southwest Collegiate Plunge
We got our first look at two top-10 Big 12 men’s teams in Texas and Texas A&M at the Southwest Collegiate Plunge, hosted at the Mansfield ISD Natatorium outside of Dallas.
This meet has an interesting format where they stretched the pool to 10 lanes, and gave each of the 5 participants two swimmers in a consolation final and two swimmers in a championship final. This meet is a superb spectator experience, as it gives the excitement of a prelims-finals meet, while forcing team scores to remain relatively close. They also skip such “crowd favorites” as the 1000 and mile free.
In the end, the three Big 12 programs finished on top, followed closely by TCU and SMU.
Final Team Scores:
- Texas 996.5
- Texas A&M 925
- Missouri 825.5
- TCU 820
- SMU739
Texas had a lot of question marks headed into this meet concerning their relays. After losing three of their biggest stars from last season (Ricky Berens, Hill Taylor, and Dave Walters), there was much national anticipation about which pieces they would use to fill out their relays. Those questions were answered here, as Texas swept the relays with sophomore Dax Hill and senior Neil Caskey stepping up big time.
Hill, who has a ton of potential this season, had his best relay swim in the 400 free relay where he split a 44.83, which was second in the meet only to Jimmy Feigen. Caskey’s best split was a 48.30 in the butterfly leg of the 400 medley
Texas’ 400 free relay, which Hill, Feigen, and Caskey were all a part of, swam a 3:00.27, which is good for the third best time in the country this year.
Feigen had other great swims during the two-day meet, including a 20.22 50 free and 44.21 100 free, both of which put him top 3 in the nation despite being Texas’ first meet of the season.
For Texas A&M, Omar Enriquez, who during his freshman season set school records in all four event 400 yards or longer, showed his versatility by swimming some great 200 yard races as this meet as well. He was the consolation final Champion in both the 200 free (1:41.76) which was third best overall, and the 200 backstroke (1:50.68) where he was second fastest overall.
If Texas has a big weakness this year, it will be depth in the butterfly events. Beyond Caskey, who won both the 100 and the 200, Texas didn’t have a great second performance from anybody.
Of course, Enriquez was still very good in the 500 free, where he won the meet title in 4:26.93, which is the fourth best time in the country so far this year.
Texas A&M’s outstanding freshman class showed the immediate impact that they would have on this team, especially Kyle Troskot. The Canadian freshman was A&M’s highest finisher in the 50 free, third overall, in 20.81.
Given A&M’s dryland routine that is recognized as one of the toughest in the nation, it’s highly impressive that a freshman can come in and adjust so quickly. There are big things to come from that young man.
Though Missouri lacked the depth to compete with their Big 12 brethren, they did put together at least one very good relay in the 200 medley, where they were second in 1:31.62. They got two very strong middle legs from Michael Lopresti (25.55 in the breaststroke) and Anders Melin (22.00 in the fly).
SMU got great performances from Mindaugas Sadauskas (who I can only imagine has a really good nickname). He placed second in the 100 and 50 freestyles (45.32/20.71) behind only Feigen, and had the fastest split in the field in the 200 free relay of 20.27.
Edgar Crespo, a junior out of Panama, had many great swims for TCU, especially his second-place 100 breaststroke result. He had the lead at the 50-yard mark, but was chased down by Texas’ Nick D’Innocenzo on the back half. He still finished with a great time of 55.86. This was just off of his season best (55.46), which sits at third best in the country, and makes him a legitimate NCAA A-final contender for the Horned Frogs a season after being their only NCAA qualifier.
The Texas Longhorns have a big tri-meet coming up next weekend against Michigan and Indiana in Bloomington, with the Aggies’ next meets coming in 2 weeks against Florida Atlantic during a swing through Florida.
Full results in PDF form are here.
Texas A&M Women Take Houston Down
The Texas A&M women (1-0) took down the Houston Cougars 183-101 to open their dual meet season.
The Aggies swept the meet, winning all 14 swimming events and both the 1-meter and 3-meter boards. More notable than just that they dominated the meet was the fact that A&M had a lot of surprise swimmers step up and fill gaps left by the departure of one of the best classes in school history.
Caroline McElhaney, who first signed with rivals University of Texas with a huge junior-resume, came to Aggieland after a very uneventful freshman season in Austin. She has already made her presence felt in a big way, winning both butterfly events in times of 54.99 and 1:59.40. These times are both top-20 in the nation, and are at-or-better than her best times from last season. Things really seem to be clicking for this young star at A&M.
Texas A&M freshman Breeja Larson has also shown that she will be more than capable of filling the hole left by the graduation of 100 breast National Champion Alia Atkinson. Her mark of 1:01.79 is fifth best in the country for the young swimmer. Another great freshman for the Aggies, Junior National team member Cammile Adams, missed the meet. Reports are that she is currently rehabbing a shoulder injury.
Coming into this Big 12 season, based on what A&M lost and what Texas returned, it looked like the Longhorns would run away with the Big 12 title. Now that we are settling into the season, however, things don’t look like quite as much of a slam-dunk. The two will meet in a dual meet next Friday in College Station, though historically, the outcome of this dual has had very little correlation to what happens in March.
Full results available through the Texas A&M Athletic site.
Other Results
Texas won a big two-day tri meet against Indiana and Michigan….The Lady Longhorns were again without Kathleen Hersey…Iowa State (women) welcomed three small-school teams to Ames, going 3-0 on the weekend…In a battle for third place in the Big 12, the Missouri women took down rivals Kansas for the sixth straight year 165-129…Dominique Bouchard went a 1:59.57 200 back to pace the Tigers, which is the fourth best time in school history…Kansas sophomore Rebecca Swank went a 4:53 in her 500 free, which is the third best time in the Big 12 this year.
layla, you should definitely get the A&M coaches on the phone, I’m sure they would love to hear from you.
In all seriousness, the programs you named are college swimming powerhouses, and have been for decades. A&M hardly has the history of those teams, however they are clearly on the rise, and should break into the top 10 at NCAAs this year. It takes time, dedication, and tunnel vision to build a program like that, my guess is the coaches want as few breaks from the routine as possible. All that really matters in college swimming is the last meet of the year anyway, everything else is just fuel for speculation. Well unless you go to Stanford.
“They also skip such “crowd favorites” as the 1000 and mile free.”
I was covering distance prelims at the LA Grand Prix in July for Swimming World. I got really into it and wrote an elaborate article about how cool it was. For me, it’s pretty exciting watching Ous Mellouli beat out Chad LaTourette by 0.01 and to watch Kate Ziegler swim her best time in two years (8:30). I think it depends on who the crowd is haha. 😉
True, if the crowd is full of swim geeks, it can be awesome.
Also, I feel like distance races at the LA Gran Prix are, in general, significantly more exciting that at an October NCAA meet…
Sounds like a cop out. The Texas women left for their tri meet on Thurs and returned by Sat night. So they basically missed one day of training–the same amount of days they would miss for a dual in College Station. Georgia, Auburn, Arizona can’t be farther than Boca Raton.
And what’s up with all this hype about A&M’s dryland training? Is it so infinitely more intensive than those schools’ or Texas’ that they can’t schedule more challenging meets like those schools do? Didn’t all those schools fare better than A&M at NCAAs? Maybe A&M needs to consider changing their strategy…
That makes no sense. They’re not going to do dryland on the days they’re competing, so what does it matter if they don’t have access to their equipment? And it’s not like all their dual meets are at home. Are they going to have their necessary equipment when they take that Florida trip? If they’re going down there, why not compete against Florida instead of Florida Atlantic?
Ehh. That’s what I’ve heard as justification from those on the inside. Obviously, some interruptions to training are unavoidable, but A&M’s coaches seem to want as few as possible. Takes two to tango…if Florida didn’t want to race when they were there, then A&M can’t just create a meet.
Part of the problem could be that there’s so few teams within driving distance of College Station and Austin…SMU, A&M, TCU, Texas…LSU…doesn’t leave a ton of options short of flying places which costs $$ and extra days of travel. That could help explain why both teams are light on meets in the fall. Unlike in the Midwest or west coast, where there’s 15 or 20 teams within a 4 hour drive… Read more »
The A&M guys are typically very light on their schedules. Don’t believe in training trips, etc.
The theory that the coaches seem to have is that because their training relies so much on their massive dryland routine (which is one of the best/most intense in the country) that they greatly prefer to be at their home pool where they know what equipment they’re going to have access to.
Good point, it did work out for Texas last year :-).
A&M has a light YEAR, not just semester. What’s up with that? As far as Texas’s schedule, it’s practically identical to last year’s and that worked out pretty well for them. They didn’t bring everyone to this event last year either. When you have nearly 40 swimmers and divers on the roster and only 4 can compete in each event, there’s no point in bringing everyone.
Not a huge deal, except that it means only 1 meet before December. Will definitely be trial by fire. Both A&M and Texas have very light fall semesters this season…
Well they have a meet this weekend. Is one week that big of a deal?