Over the next few weeks, as the Long Course season closes out, new freshman are arriving on campus, and fans everywhere ramp up for another exciting NCAA Season, we will be running a team-by-team preview of the upcoming NCAA season. Starting with the no.12 teams and finishing with the defending National Championships (Texas men and Florida women) we will work our way down the top finishers from last year’s NCAAs and will also jump into some rising teams that we expect to break into the top tier this season. Click here to see the other women’s previews, and click here to see all of the previews, Men’s and Women’s.
Key Losses: Ava Ohlgren (18 NCAA points, 3 relays), Maggie Bird (1 NCAA Relay), Melissa Marik (4 NCAA Relays)
Key Additions: Emily Bos (Back, Free), Erin Reisinger (Back, Free), Erin Reisinger (Free, Fly, Back), Haley Krakoski (Sprint Free), Siena DeVenuto (Distance Free)
2009-2010 Recap: The 2009-2010 season was the beginning of a new era of sorts for Auburn. While Brett Hawke was certainly not new to the team, it was his first year as the king of the thing. Richard Quick and David Marsh were gone. Paul Yetter was in, for the year at least, from NBAC. There was a lot of new ideas within the program, and the Tigers were coming off of a few years of uncertain leadership.
This year, the ship will be fully in Hawke’s command, and swimmers will return to the same program that they left the year before. The swimmers have had a year to settle into Hawke’s routine. Yetter has moved on to work with his own club in Florida. The last remaining parts of the 2007 National Championship squad (Melissa Marik, Maggie Bird, and Ava Ohlgren) are graduated. What’s left is a squad absolutely loaded with talent that is ready to get back to the top of the heap.
Last year’s 8th place finish wasn’t what many expected. They were just shy of 100 points behind 7th place USC, and over 150 behind 6th place Texas A&M. That left them, for the first time in a long while, out of the “elite tier” of teams at the NCAA Championships. While a 7th place finish is nothing to scoff at, the Tigers definitely left some points on the table with only two individual finishes in the top 8.
Micah Lawrence failed to final in the 100 breast: her primary event which she was seeded second in coming into the meet. Arianna Vanderpool-Wallace lost a swim-off in the 50 free, and then dropped back to 11th before failing to final in the 100 fly. She was able to rebound for a pretty good 100 freestyle final (47.94, 5th), but even there she had the fastest time in prelims.
Ohlgren performed well in the 200 IM, where she was 4th, and the 200 fly, where she was not expected to final but was still able to pick up a few points. The relays also performed right at their expectations.
New Year, New Expectations: But now it’s a new season, with new expectations. Lawrence seems to have gotten everything back on track over the summer. At LC Nationals, she was the only Collegian to make the A-final of the 100, and finished 3rd behind only NCAA Champ Annie Chandler and All-World superstar Rebecca Soni. This leaves her, along with Canadian Jillian Tyler and George Mason’s Ashley Danner, both of whom did not swim at this meet, a favorite to win that event at NCAA’s. She also finished 8th in the 200 breaststroke (although her prelims time made her the second fastest overall on the day), which was a pleasant surprise from her.
The departed Marik was the top backstroker for the Auburn Medley relays. Their top returning backstroker is senior Erica Meissner, who really is better at the 200 than the 100/50, so there is definitely an opening for a freshman to take Marik’s relay spots.
Bucking the Trend: While Auburn is known mostly for their prowess in the sprints (they return 3 swimmers under 23 in the 50-Vanderpool-Wallace, sophomore Hannah Riordan, and senior Caitlin Geary), they have a pretty good distance swimmer developing in Katie Gardocki. Although she may have been a little overlooked last year thanks to the absolute domination of Georgia in the distance free events, Gardocki, as only a freshman, finished 4th at the SEC Championships in the 500 free and 18th at NCAAs in the mile. Expect her to get some points this season.
But Still, the Speed: And of course there will always be the famed Auburn sprinters. Vanderpool-Wallace is one of three top sprinters returning in the conference, although all three (Shara Stafford and Sarah Bateman of Florida) are juniors this season. That should make the women’s 50 freestyle one of the most anticipated races on the SEC meet schedule. Hannah Riordan is the second star of this group. She will only be a sophomore next year, and in year two under Hawke the sprint-guru, she should definitely break out. Her best times last season were 22.53/49.17, and I’d expect her to be under 22.5 and 48.9 at NCAA’s this year to break into the scoring finals.
While Auburn returns a lot of great swimmers, their freshman class will be depended on to make an impact on the team scoring.
A Star Lost: This freshman class ended up getting as much publicity for what it lost as it did for what it had. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, that’s Dagny Knutson. Knutson was the best swimmers in what was nationally an incredibly strong women’s class; perhaps one of the strongest ever. Knutson decommitted from Auburn after Yetter’s departure, eventually turning pro and leaving a big hole (and probably a full-scholarship) on the Auburn roster. As a freshman, Knutson would have probably challenged to win the 200 free/IM and 500 free, and could have finaled in 5 or more other events. She certainly would have given a rocket-boost to the 800 free relay, which was only 13th in the nation last year and has to replace an anchor.
Because of Knutson’s departure, the Tigers are left with a good deal of scholarship money to play with. They certainly should be expected to bring in an international signee or two at the semester, but it won’t be a swimmer even in Knutson’s stratosphere.
But Others Will Shine Brightly: But this is not to say that Knutson was the whole class. Quite the contrary, actually. All 5 of Auburn’s incoming freshmen ranked in the top 50 of the class, and all 5 have immediate-impact potential.
The class is very heavy with backstrokers, and as good as Melissa Marik has been for this team as both a leader and a swimmer, this next class will certainly be able to pick up the slack that she has left behind there.
Their top 3 recruits are each the number-one rated swimmer out of their state. Olivia Scott from Illinois, Erin Reisinger from Georgia, and Emily Bos from Michigan are all 54-lows or better in the 100 back.
Scott has a lot of versatility. Her best times are in the 100 free (50.07), 100 back (54.16) and fly (53.09). Considering it only took a 53.01 to final in the 100 fly last year, she should be an immediate scorer there. Because of her versatility (she’s an above average breaststroker too), she also has a ton of potential in the shorter IM race, where she’s already gone a 2:01.4, but should be able to drop off of if she were to focus on that race.
Reisinger is good in both the 100 and 200 backstrokes. She has a 53.99 in the 100 and a 1:58.0 in the 200. Her best 50 backstroke time (25.22) is less than a tenth off of Melissa Marik’s mark from last year’s NCAA finals (25.14). That’s another potential freshman scorer for Auburn.
But the best backstroker, and best bet to replace Marik on the relays, is Bos. Bos only has meters times in the SWIMS database since the polyurethane suits went away, but her best LCM time of 1:01.77 converts to a 52.7 in yards. She also has textile bests of 23.1 and 49.95 in the freestyle sprint events. Once Hawke gets his hands on her, those times will definitely drop, drop, drop, and she could be on as many as 4 NCAA relays as a freshman.
Haley Krakoski from Arizona has also followed the train of sprinters looking to benefit from Hawke’s expertise. At the 2009 SC Junior Nationals, she was 4th in the 50 free with a 22.96.
The 5th recruit in this class is Siena Devenuto out of Florida. She is a distance freestyler, with a 09-10 best of 4:47.6 in the 500 free, which puts her about 5 seconds out of a B-final at NCAA’s. She also has a 16:35 in personal textile best in the mile, which is about 25 seconds (which is not as huge of a gap as it seems) out of scoring.
Package Transfer: The Tigers also recruited the Junior College Swimmer of the Year, Yennifer Marquez, from last season. While her times aren’t anything to brag about (24 low in the 50 free at NJCAA Nationals), when she gets into the Auburn program and big-time training environment, she has good shot at making huge strides. In an interesting twist, Frank Bradley, who took over Yetter’s spot as an Associate Head Coach, was Marquez’s coach last season at Indian River State College
Quality Diving: Auburn’s best two divers are both juniors, and combined for 22 points at NCAA’s last year. Both Vennie Dantin (6th) and Anna Aguero (12th) are platform specialists, but each placed in an additional board as well (Aguero 15th in the 1-meter, Dantin 15th in the 3-meter). Their freshman diving recruit, Alissa Zetzman, is rather tall for a diver at 5’9, but has a lot of potential in the springboard events. In 2009, she finaled in both the 1-meter and 3-meter at the AAU Age Group Naitonals.
2011 Outlook: I don’t see any way that Auburn scores fewer than the 151 points they had last season. The question is can they make up the sizable gap over the teams ahead of them. They should certainly expect to overtake Texas A&M, who lost a ton, but everyone else in the top have also added big pieces. With Knutson, they would have a shot at a top-5 finish. Without her, it’s going to be very difficult to pull off.
