2012 SEC Women's Championship Preview

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This year’s SEC Championships (run as a combined meet) will be raced in Tennessee. We’ll give each group a separate preview, and first we’ll focus on the women.

This year’s meet should be a highly competitive battle. I’d expect the three-team battle for the finish to be much tighter than what we saw last year (winners Georgia were 160 points ahead of 3rd place Auburn), and the SEC women’s league overall seems to be on a big uptick top-to-bottom. If teams want to maintain, or improve, their standings from last season, the “status-quo” won’t be good enough; they’ll have to really focus and step up.

The leaders at the top of the conference will be the standards of Georgia, Florida, and Auburn.

Georgia are the defending champs, and though they had some big losses, they’ve reloaded with a monster freshman class. Megan Romano and Wendy Trott are the veterans, but freshmen like Amber McDermott, Jordan Mattern, and Maddie Locus have been very strong in picking up the slack.

Georgia’s sophmores have been the really impressive group on this team, though. Last year’s class was much smaller than this years, but Melanie Margalis and Shannon Vreeland have made huge impacts on the team in their second seasons.

Florida plays well in a conference championship environment. Their relays have taken a hit since last year thanks to the loss of one, key sprinter (and they weren’t great then, either), but they have a slew of big-time individual scorers including their two National Team stars Elizabeth Beisel and Teresa Crippen. Individual scorers play much bigger than conference championship meets, where the slide in relay scoring is a relatively insignificant portion of team scoring. As we’ve been saying all year, though, the key to the team’s success rests firmly on the capable shoulders of Sara Bateman, who is by far the team’s top sprinter.

She will be supported by junior Jamie Bohunicky, who is really finding her short-distance stride this season. Also watch out for sophomore Ellese Zalewski, who has been well off of her freshman-year times this season. Last year, she just about peaked in an un-Florida-like December meet, and she avoided that trap this year. That could mean big times for her and solide points (more than the 3 she scored at SEC’s last year).

I love this Auburn team. They’ve got some outstanding relays, and I think they have a chance to do very well at NCAA’s. The alpha and the omega for the team is no-less-than Anna Vanderpool-Wallace, but I think she trains straight through SEC’s this year, given that she’s already been under 47 in the 100 free in December. Olivia Scott and Emily Bos are having big sophomore seasons. Lauren Norberg has stepped up hugely in the breaststrokes, and at this point seems like she could rightly be called an “upgrade” even from Micah Lawrence.

The catch with the Auburn team, is that I’m rooting for them to take only 3rd at SEC’s. Not because I have anything against the Tigers, but I think that they’ve got big-time NCAA potential (maybe even top 5) if everything work outs how it should. I’d want to see them putting their entire focus on NCAA’s, rather than wasting a taper on SEC’s. Either way, I think they’ll be much closer to winning than they were last season.

Tennessee is another program I really like. Jenny Connolly is a snake-in-the-grass who should have a huge meet. The same with Lindsay Gendron. Tennessee runs a Florida-like season cycle, where they put virtually no rest into any of their in-season meets. They don’t have the depth of the above-mentioned teams (that will come starting with next year’s huge freshman class), but they could put multiple relays onto medal stands at this meet.

The rest of the conference has a few star swimmers scattered around, with coaches building solid teams around them. Amanda Kendall at LSU is the obvious name. She’s had an awesome 12-months of swimming, and I’d bet she’s on a swim-through at SEC’s (though many of her LSU teammates will probably be rested).

Arkansas has a very good distance group built around Chelsea Franklin, and an experienced butterflier in Katie Whitbeck. They have big hopes resting on a big finish from their 800 free relay. They’ve also got the advantage of having probably the best diving program in the conference, where diving is not overall a strength. That should give them at least a 100 point boost right out of the gate.

South Carolina’s Amanda Rutqvist is a breaststroke star in the making, though she’s been well off this year of what she was as a freshman last season. Alabama also has big hopes for their top breaststroker Alex Popa. Kentucky had some big losses, but they have a freshman class that’s performing very well, topped by butterflier Christina Betchel.

Here’s the top races to watch:

100 Butterfly

This race is so stacked, it’s not even funny. Olivia Scott broke the Auburn record as only a sophomore earlier this season. Jennifer Connolly will swim on the front-end of her tough day-3 double (if she swims both that and the 100 back), and her teammate Kelsey Floyd is due for a breakout. Alabama sophomore Kristel Vourna could also surprise – she was 6th in this race as a rookie.

Then there’s the non-butterfly-butterfliers. There’s at least three in the SEC who are outstanding sprint freestylers, but can also throw-down crazy-fast 100 butterflies: Amanda Kendall, Sarah Bateman, and Anna Vanderpool-Wallace.

100 Free

Piggy-backing off of the 100 fly, watch the three-way fight between Kendall, Bateman, and Vanderpool-Wallace in the 100 free, with maybe Megan Romano thrown in as well. In that event alone, expect to see as many as three school records go down, and maybe even (for the first time ever) two college swimmers going sub-47 in the same race.

1650 Free

Georgia senior Wendy Trott will be shooting to complete a career-sweep of the SEC titles in the race, but her biggest challenge will come from a freshman who seems capable of doing the same: Amber McDermott. McDermott is certainly capable of getting to the 15:53 that Trott won this race with last year. Expect Florida’s Elizabeth Beisel to be a scratch, though her teammate Corinne Showalter could be a huge surprise. Last year, Showalter dropped 36 seconds at SEC’s to place 3rd. She hasn’t even swum the race this year, but is sub-16 potential, as are Shannon Vreeland and Lindsay Gendron.

200 Breaststroke

South Carolina’s  Amanda Rutqvist is both the defending SEC champion and the SEC record holder with a 2:08 and 2:07 from SEC’s/NCAA’s, respectively. but the mighty M’s from Georgia (Melanie Margalis, Jana Mangimelli, and Michelle McKeehan) have all been 2:09’s already this year, whereas Rutqvist is roughly two seconds slower than she was headed into February of last year.

One of two things are happening there. She’s either hit a sophomore-slump, or she’s taking a totally different approach to the season (which would be a curveball, given that her taper last year hit perfectly for both SEC’s and NCAA’s). My guess is maybe she’s been hitting the weights a bit heavier to try and bring her 100 breast up to the same level. Big scoring implications in this race as well.

The Picks

Picking the winner of this year’s SEC is difficult, largely because of Georgia. They probably lost the most of any team in the hunt, but they also are getting the most out of their freshman class. It comes down to weighing those gains versus losses, along with the uncertainty of how Bauerle will hand the taper of this talented class. Georgia also has National Title aspirations this season, and that might push them to swim straight through to NCAA’s.

At the end of the day, Georgia’s big freshman class gives them depth, and it’s that depth that wins these conference meets. The finish order will be almost the same as it was last year. It’s a bit boring, but better parity doesn’t necessarily mean a change in the standings – though unlike most of the conferences we preview, an upset here wouldn’t be a big surprise. There’s not as much year-to-year turnover in conference standings as it might seem on the surface.

1. Georgia
2. Florida
3. Auburn
4. Tennessee
5. LSU
6. South Carolina
7. Arkansas
8. Alabama
9. Kentucky
10. Vanderbilt