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Florida men and women’s swimming teams competed for the final time this season at home. The Gators participated in a last chance NCAA qualifying meet over the weekend.
The three-day meet consisted of both men and women teams from FSU and just Women’s teams from FGCU, Miami and Texas A&M.
The meet acted as the last chance qualifier for consideration in the NCAA tournament next month. The Gators added four on the women’s side and four on the men’s side. As well as three other women going for the relay and three men who are on what head coach Greg Troy calls “the bubble.”
Who Participates?
Swimmers who do not qualify for post A-cuts (automatic qualifying times for the NCAA tournament) throughout the season use this meet in hopes of making a B standard qualifying time. However, B Standard, an event has an insufficient amount of A-cuts for a specific event.
Coach Troy said they had two groups of swimmers participate at this event. Those who were short of getting into the post A cuts and wanted to compete in a smaller field to upgrade time. The other group the coaches had to participate were the younger simmers who were not satisfied with their time.
Lack of Home Meets:
Construction of the new Exactech arena forced swimming and diving to participate in more road meets.
Coach Troy said swimming on the road helped for the conference meet but also hurt them from a time perspective. Florida has one of fastest pools in the country, coach Troy
said missing that bump in time defiantly set them back a little.
Coach Troy also said the team missed the 800-1000 fans at home meets and it was tough participating in sometimes hostile environments.
Florida put up some strong performances for NCAA consideration this weekend at the Last Chance Meet.
STORY: https://t.co/eeEReaf6tK #Gators pic.twitter.com/puymPwWQoy
— Gators Swimming & Diving (@GatorsSwimDv) February 27, 2017
Up Next:
The women will find out their definite qualifiers on Wednesday. Those women who qualify will leave two weeks from today for the NCAA tournament.
The men will have to wait one week to find out their qualifiers but have exhausted all opportunities to qualify. The men will leave three weeks from today.
The NCAA is a shorter tournament.With only three days of competition coach Troy says his team is ready for the competition and his team will be racing tough.
