With the more experienced swimmers back in Gainesville, Florida concluded the fall season with weak showings at the Georgia Invitational.
However, the three-day competition gave UF a look at the site of the Southeastern Conference Championship meet, set to begin Feb. 17, 2010, and allowed the coaching staff to see where the athletes were, performance-wise, at this point.
“For all practical purposes, we ended our season, as a team, at the FSU meet. We were really ecstatic with our performance against FSU, and this was a little more to decide exactly who was going to fill out the bottom end of the conference team,” UF coach Gregg Troy said.
UF faced teams from Auburn, Denver, Harvard and host Georgia. The men finished with 758 points, in a distant second behind Georgia (1374 points). The women had 678 points, and they finished third behind Georgia (1489) and Denver (861).
A standout for UF was sophomore Jose Crescimbeni, who had a busy three days on the stat sheets in both individual races and relays.
He finished third in the 100-yard backstroke, sixth in the 100 butterfly and sixth in the 200 fly. The sophomore also was a part of the third-place 200 medley relay, the fifth-place 400 medley relay and the sixth-place 400 freestyle relay teams.
Junior Logan Storie captured the sole swimming victory for UF in the 200 freestyle and was a part of UF’s third-place 400 free relay team.
The other men’s victory came from diver Anthony Lewark, who edged Denver’s Cody Stambaugh (358.95) for the win in the 3-meter diving finals with a score of 363.75.
Troy said he saw more consistency from some of the men, while others didn’t do what they needed to and that they still have some work to do.
On the women’s side, sophomore Anna-Liisa Pold finished fourth in the 400 individual medley, sixth in the 200 fly and sixth in the 200 back. She also was a part of the third-place 800 free relay, the fifth-place 200 free relay and the fifth-place 400 medley relay teams.
“Overall, the weekend was a success from what we wanted to see from them,” Troy said. “I was a little disappointed, we had a few people that we expected a better performance from and we didn’t get what we needed.”
He added, “This certainly gave us a good basis to start to make some decisions about who will fill out the conference lineup”
