Pre-Meet Notes
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – The No. 7 University of Florida women's swimming and diving team will open up the 2020 slate with a home quad-meet against Vanderbilt, Liberty and North Florida on Friday, Jan. 3 at 2:00 p.m. inside the O'Connell Center Natatorium.
Since their last dual meet on Nov. 8 against Florida State, the team competed at the Georgia Tech and Auburn Diving Invitational, picking up victories at both events.
Florida tallied an overall score of 1,422 points over their four-day stay in Atlanta to win the Georgia Tech Invitational for the second straight year. The team would go on to set eight top-10 program swims (four individual and four relay), highlighted by
Leah Braswell's new personal-best and NCAA-leading 1,650 free swim of 15:47.85. The effort won her the event and placed her as the third-best swim in program history.
Five divers traveled to Auburn on Dec. 16-19 and picked up their second straight Auburn Diving Invitational win with a cumulative total of 145 points.
Ashley McCool led the effort on the board, winning the 3-meter with a personal-best score and a runner-up bid in the 1-meter on the first day.
Brooke Madden hit the board for the second time this season and set a new lifetime-best on the 3-meter to finish behind McCool in second-place.
Meet History
The Gators start off the new year with a trio of unfamiliar opponents.
UF and Vanderbilt are meeting for just the fifth time in program history, with the last coming in 2015 in Nashville. The Gators walked away with a 193-69 victory and increased their all-time record against the Commodores to 4-0.
As for Liberty and North Florida, Friday will mark the first time competing against each other.
Quotables
Head coach Jeff Poppell- "We're excited about the opportunity to compete in this quad-meet to start the new year. It's been nearly six weeks since our last competition and we definitely need to sharpen up our race skills. I'm hoping that we can gather some valuable information from this meet to aid us in make some difficult decisions in the coming month related to conference roster, primary events, relays, etc."
What's Next
The Gators will be back at the O'Connell Center for Senior Day and the final home dual meet of the season on Jan. 25 against Auburn at 11:00 a.m. The meet will be streamed live on SEC Network.
Florida will wrap-up its dual meet and conference portion of their schedule when they travel to Tennessee on Feb. 1.
Just 17 days later, the team will travel to Auburn, Ala. for the 2020 Southeastern Conference Championship (Feb. 18-22).
NCAA Diving Zones will take place on March 9-11 before the whole team heads to Athens, Ga. for the 2020 NCAA Championships on March 18-21.
