Louisville junior Kelsi Worrell has taken a different approach for the 2015 NCAA Championships than she did at the ACC Championships. Specifically, she will swim the 200 fly as her day 3 individual event rather than the 100 free that she chose at ACC’s two weeks ago.
The 200 fly is a new event for Worrell to really focus on last season (she swam it only once as a freshman), but she wound up placing 4th at last year’s NCAA Championships, and was the fastest non-senior in the country. She further built her confidence earlier this season when she swam a 1:54.75 at Winter Nationals in December.
When the ACC Championships psych sheets were released in February, Worrell’s entries teased a bit in that she was over-entered in both the 100 free and 200 fly, though she eventually wound up dropping the latter in favor of the former.
Despite success in that 100 free, where she swam a 47.71 and broke the ACC Record, she’s reverted back to the 200 fly for NCAA’s. Worrell ranks 7th in the country in the 100 free this season and would have been the 6th seed in that event at NCAA’s. She also ranks 7th in the 200 fly and will be the 7th seed in that race in Greensboro.
The 200 fly, after the graduation of the top three swimmers from last season (Cammile Adams, Maya DiRado, Lindsay Gendron) is wide-open this year, though Christina Bechtel and Hali Flickinger have impressed with 1:52’s already this year. At NCAA’s last season, Bechtel was able to improve upon her seed time, while Flickinger added (but still wound up in the A-Final).
Worrell will also have to battle her teammate Tanja Kylliainen in the 200 fly – the 2015 ACC swimmer of the year. Kylliainen’s post-race comments indicate that she’s held back more for the big meet this year than she has in seasons past, though she still enters NCAA’s as the 3rd seed.
Smart move for Worrell; given her improvement in the 100fly from last year, she should be able to drop enough to contend for top 4 in the 2Fly, or even challenge the top 3 for the title as a best case scenario.