LSU Press Release
BATON ROUGE-On the final day of the annual quad meet, the LSU women’s swimming team (7-2, 2-2) collected three wins over Houston, Rice and Tulane to wrap up the regular season on Saturday at the LSU Natatorium.
The Lady Tigers defeated Houston 242-111, Rice 218-129 and Tulane 254-97 in dominating fashion to close out the home slate for the team and complete the sweep. In all, LSU totaled 10 victories over the course of the meet, including finishing in the top-three in 16 of the 19 events.
Four pool records were also broken by the Lady Tigers over the two days of competition in the 200 free relay (1:30.37) and 400 free relay (3:19.56), as well as the 100 breaststroke (1:00.27) by Colleen O’Neil and 200 free (1:47.45) by Kara Kopcso in the individual events.
The swimming and diving team will return to competition on February 14-18 for the 2017 SEC Championships in Knoxville, Tennessee.
“Today was good. We had some women who had their final meet of the season, so we’re looking for peak performance there. For everybody else, we’re just heading into a little bit of a rest phase before the conference championships,” said head swimming coach Dave Geyer.
“From what we saw, the pieces are there, and it’s just a matter of putting it together for the last three weeks before we head up to Tennessee.”
For the second consecutive day, LSU started strong in the relays. In the 400 medley relay, the team of Kate Zimmer, O’Neil, Kopcso and Leah Troskot took first place with a time of 3:38.53. Makenna Wilson, Summer Spradley, Helen Grossman and Haylee Knight followed in second at 3:44.93.
O’Neil picked up her 11th win on the season in the 100 breaststroke with a blazing finish of 1:00.27 to break the pool record.
Gabrielle Pick logged a win in the 200 fly with a time of 2:01.01, and in the 100 free, Spradley garnered a victory, touching the wall at 50.40.
In the final event of the meet, Troskot, Knight, Taylor Anderson and Spradley bested the pool record in the 200 free relay, coming in first with an overall time of 1:30.37.
In the platform diving portion of the meet, Lizzie Cui dove to a score of 251.65 for first place overall. Rileigh Knox took second, posting a score of 221.15, and Makayla Robillard tallied a fourth-place finish with a score of 200.30.
In the men’s exhibition, Juan Celaya-Hernandez scored a 418.65 and Matthew Phillip followed in second at 400.75.
“We’re really right where I want to be,” said head diving coach Doug Shaffer. “We’re not peaking, we have a little inconsistencies and a little twerks. We’re still working towards that, and we’re coming off our strength and condition program and going into speed. Everything is channeling towards our championship season, and I’m really happy with where we are right now with the performances we’ve had up until this point.”
“The whole crew had some really good elements. We’re here still getting our personal bests. Lizzie and Rileigh had personal bests yesterday. I want to continue to grow and that’s what we need moving forward.”
