Saturday night finals at the Florida Last Chance meet didn’t see much in the way of new NCAA qualifiers, but did see a couple swimmers already in improve their times in other events.
Georgia Hohmann was the biggest mover, dropping 5 seconds off her season-best in the 400 IM with a 4:10.32. That moves her to somewhere in the late-20s in terms of NCAA ranks.
Hohamann is already solidly into the meet in the 200 backstroke, but this was probably a test swim to see what else the team should enter her in. Hohmann swam the 200 IM and 100 back at SECs, but would be a longshot to score at NCAAs in either unless her times improve drastically. The 400 IM still leaves her a ways out of scoring range, but her rank there is now higher htan either the 200 IM or 100 back.
Meanwhile freshman Caeleb Dressel continued to shine in some off-events. After hitting a nice 1:43 in the 200 IM on day 1, Dressel put together a 1:33.95 in the 200 free on day 2. That’s his lifetime-best by over half a second, and it could put him in the hunt for the team’s 800 free relay, though he’s likely more valuable on the other four relays in addition to his 3 individual events.
Nick Alexiou was the slowest leg on that squad at SECs, and he also swam this last chance meet, finishing behind Dressel in 1:35.51. Alexiou was a bit faster in the morning at a 1:34.45 that should put him in decent shape for an individual NCAA invite.
A few more notable swims:
- Florida’s Ashlee Linn swam the 200 free and crushed her season-best by three seconds with a 1:46.33. Still, that’s not a great swim compared to the 1:43.76 anchor split she dropped on Florida’s 800 free relay at SECs.
- Florida State’s Sami Pochowski continues to go after her 100 breast, trying to drop it down into NCAA invite range. After improving the time twice early in the weekend, she went backwards a bit tonight. Her 1:00.49 from this morning has her sitting 37th overall. The top 39 in most events were invited last year. She went 1:01.02 Saturday night.
- Natalie Hinds of Florida did much the same as Dressel, swimming an off-event even though she’s already easily qualified for NCAAs. Her 100 back was a lifetime-best by about a half second in 53.36.
- Florida’s Corey Main wasn’t quite able to better his own season-best in the 100 back, which currently sits a precarious 25th with Pac-12s still to come (only 29 were invited in each men’s event last year). He went 46.78 tonight, two tenths off his season-best.
