2018 CCSA Psych Sheets Show FGCU Women as Heavy Favorites

Coastal Collegiate Swimming Association (CCSA) – Men and Women

• Wednesday, February 14 – Saturday, February 17
• University of Georgia Gabrielsen Natatorium, Athens, GA (Eastern Time Zone)
• Defending Champion: UMBC men (3x) & FGCU women (3x) (results)
• Live results
• Live Video
• Championship Central
• Psych Sheet

The Coastal Collegiate Swimming Association (CCSA) has released the psych sheets for its 2018 championship meet. The men’s meet will have a new champion, while Florida Gulf Coast is chasing their 4th-straight win.

Unlike many conferences, in the CCSA teams enter athletes only in the 3 individual events they’re planning to swim (for the most part). For one swimmer, that meant a tough choice – Florida Gulf Coast’s Petra Halmai would’ve had a top-5 seed in 4 different events: the 100 breast, 200 breast, 100 fly, and 200 IM. She swam all 4 races at the team’s mid-season Ohio State Invitational, but head coach Dave Rollins said that he’s feeling confident about her breaststroke, and about the rest of his team in the 100 fly.

“We decided to have Petra swim the 100 breast because it allowed our team the best opportunity for points,” Rollins said. “We are fortunate to have some very strong athletes in the fly events and Petra’s versatility allows us to maximize our opportunities.”

FGCU has 3 of the top 5 swimmers in the 100 breaststroke and 100 fly, but ha a few more overall scoring entries in the 100 fly.

The Eagles are heavily favored to win another CCSA title. SwimSwam’s Swimulator tool has them finishing more than 500 points ahead of Gardner-Webb in swimming. Last year, FGCU picked up strong points in diving, and while they graduated double springboard conference champion Ashley Wright, their chief rivals in the conference aren’t traditionally strong in diving (Incarnate Word should dominate the diving points – to the tune of well-over 200 points). Georgia Southern has a lot more room to make up, but with 5 top-8 divers, they’ve got enough on the boards to contend for 2nd if their swimmers perform well.

Swimulator Score Projection – CCSA Women (No Diving)

The men’s meet is projected to play out very differently. Last year, UMBC dominated the meet, beating runners-up Gardner-Webb by more than 300 points. However, UMBC has moved on to join the America East Conference, which added men’s swimming this season.

But it’s not last-year’s runners-up that are the Swimulator favorites. Incarnate Word is seeded to score over 300 more points than Gardner-Webb is. The caveat here is that Gardner-Webb doesn’t have a diving program, so that leaves Florida Atlantic and Incarnate Word to chase them down in the conference’s 2 sponsored diving events.

With UMBC out of the conference, Incarnate Word and FAU should pick up ground on diving points. Unlike last year, though, both of those programs have much thinner diving programs, so that probably won’t be enough to close the gap (FAU has only 1 diver entered, while Incarnate Word has 2). Old Dominion has taken up an interesting strategy and entered a ton of divers (9 on the 1-meter). With scoring to 24* 16 and only 15 male divers entered, they’re going to pile up points even without the top-end quality of FAU and Incarnate Word if their divers can finish their programs legally. That could be over 200 diving points for them, though that won’t be enough to put them in the hunt for the team title.

*Correction: the article originally said that the CCSA men scored to 24 places as well. Only the women do, men score to 16 points.