2023 NCAA WOMEN’S SWIMMING AND DIVING CHAMPIONSHIPS
- March 15-18, 2023
- Allan Jones Aquatic Center–Knoxville, Tennessee
- SCY (25 yards)
- Meet Central
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- Pick ’em Contest
After Virginia lowered its NCAA, American, and U.S. Open records during Wednesday night’s 200 medley relay win (1:31.51), senior butterfly specialist Lexi Cuomo was asked if her .01-second reaction time felt as close as it looked.
“I think that you practice these relay starts, and we definitely are pretty aggressive when we do that,” Cuomo said. Then fellow senior Kate Douglass, who swam the second-fastest freestyle split in history (20.34) to clinch the Cavaliers’ comeback victory against NC State, interjected half-jokingly.
“Well, some of us,” Douglass smirked. Alex Walsh (26.30 breast split) and Douglass opted for safer starts with reaction times of .20 and .26, respectively.
Cuomo chuckled. “I’m usually pretty aggressive,” she corrected herself. “But yeah, that was definitely a little closer than I was planning. Honestly I got a little off-balance when I was on the block, so I’m happy I was able to recover and actually have a good swim there.”
Cuomo jumped in the water half a second behind NC State fifth year Kylee Alons, but by the end of her 22.10 fly split, she trailed by only .01 seconds.
“For my leg, at least, I also felt all the energy that our team brought to the session tonight,” Cuomo added. “So I was just trying to contain that and channel it into my swim.”
Gretchen Walsh led off Virginia’s relay with a 22.77 split, good for an early lead over NC State senior Katharine Berkoff (22.88) but slightly off her 22.65 from last month’s ACC Championships.
“I was just really excited for the meet to get started,” Gretchen Walsh said. “We’ve put in a lot of work to get to this point, and I was ready to go. Super excited to be walking out there, looking at our team and parents in the stands, I was really happy.
“When I got in, I was a little frazzled just because I had to lower my toes — your toes can’t be out of the water — so I kind of got corrected on that. It was just a little frantic,” she added. “My first 25 wasn’t spastic, but it felt like that. Finally I got in control the second 25 and I wanted to go as fast as I possibly could in the moment.”
Overall, the Cavs’ first performance of the meet gave them confidence in their training and taper as they move on to their individual races this week.
“I think we all rely on each other to keep the ball rolling,” Gretchen Walsh said. “There is pressure on us to get it going to a good start. Even in our team meetings, we’re just talking about how exciting the first session is. It’s not the final determinant of the entire meet, but it does determine like, ‘Are you ready to swim here? And are you gonna be faster?’ And I think all of us were faster than we were last year, and I think that’s just a really good teller for the rest of our meets. I’m super, super excited.”
It’s crazy to me that half the relay set national records two years in a row swimming different strokes.
I know a lot of people downvoted me last time, but I’m sticking to what I believe in. I coach my swimmers to do a .2 reaction time. If I see an official at a meet who is known to be particularly stingy, I tell my swimmers to be even safer with a .3-.4 reaction time. I’d rather get 2nd and take the points than get DQ’d like Florida did in the 200 MR.
My sophomore year at NCAA’s which was well over 15 years ago, I was anchoring the 2 medley relay and completely flanked and jumped in early, thinking my teammate had already touched the wall with her long finish. I jumped in early at -0.03, and we were DQ’d. Sad because we won. It’s important to know how hard it is to master a flying start.
You’l have to teach everyone how you get your swimmers to do a 0.2 reaction time. You make it sound like it’s easy.
He is just making stuff up lol