COLLEGE SWIMMING ROUNDUP

The College Swimming Roundup is brought to you by The CG Sports Company, the representation behind some of your favorite swimmers like Elizabeth Beisel, Beata Nelson, and Kieran Smith.

🏊‍♀️ SWIMS OF THE WEEK 🏊🏽‍♂️

Texas Freshmen At Juniors - Amid all the insane high school swims, three Texas freshmen put together some nice performances at their home pool at Speedo Winter Junior Championships - West (how does Texas keep ending up as "West" host, again?). All of them went at least one best time, even a week removed from their college team's midseason taper meet. Spencer Aurnou-Rhees did so in the 400 IM, going a 3:48.84 to drop two and a half seconds off his high school best. It'll be interesting to see if he ends up swimming the 400 IM or 200 free come conference time. Alec Enyeart continued his streak of 500 free PR meets, taking another half a second off his best with a 4:13.76. He's dropped a whopping 6.5 seconds in this event in his first college semester. Not to be outdone, Lydia Jacoby went a 2:06.81 200 breast to bump the Olympic 100 breast gold medalist up to 8th in the nation. As you can see below, she's still got room to improve in this event, especially when it comes to her turns and ability to change gears in the back half.

Gui Caribe in Brazil - We mentioned his 21.87/47.82 LCM sprints Monday in the weekly newsletter, but wanted to put his swims in some NCAA context here. The Tennessee freshman currently ranks 4th in the 50 and 2nd in the 100, but these performances hint that he might have more to give soon. In the 50, only Josh Liendo (21.61), Bjorn Seeliger (21.71), David Curtiss (21.76), Matt King (21.83), and defending NCAA champ Brooks Curry (21.84) have been faster out of current college swimmers. The 100 is even more impressive - only Liendo with his 47.55 semis and 47.71 bronze medal performance from this summer's World Champs is faster, and only Curry (47.90) has joined them under the 48 mark. Pretty sure he no-breathed this 50, and his sprint stroke is just picture perfect - great tempo throughout thanks to his powerful kick, and great downhill body position.

DSU Christmas Invite, Part One - With a weird Saturday through Tuesday schedule, this Delta State-hosted invite is only halfway done, but the first half featured a few notable swims. Henderson State's Lammy Taylor had to catch a flight to Australia to represent the Bahamas at the World Champs this week, but made an appearance here, blazing a D2-leading (by three tenths) 19.25 50 free in prelims. He also jumped on Team Crazy Train to post a wild 800 free relay split - splitting 21.35/23.75/25.30/27.27 for what turned into a respectable 1:37.67. HSU also hit the #6 200 medley relay in D2, riding 22.06/25.11/21.05/19.66 splits to a 1:27.88. The Red Wave was feeling the sprinting on the women's side too, with sophomore Kiara Pozvai going a 22.75 to sit at fourth in the nation, and then one-upping herself to jump to third with a 22.62 200 free relay leadoff. Amazingly, she dropped a total of .6 seconds off her PR over the course of the day, going from a 2022 B finalist to a national champion contender in the event. She led that relay (splits 22.62/23.82/23.97/23.50) to a 1:33.91 finish that's the second best in school history and is 12th in the nation.

The Fighting Okra's hosting duties continue Monday and Tuesday.

Wesleyan Quad Meet - Several venerable Northeastern D3 schools met in Middletown, Connecticut for a pre-Christmas break quad meet. In another quirk of scheduling, this was the season debut for the Williams Ephs, and their purple cow mascot.

Ephs sophomore Sophia Verkleeren was the star of the meet. The 2022 NCAA runner-up in the 200 back nearly hit PRs in her specialties with nation-leading efforts of 54.78/1:58.40. She also popped a PR in the 400 IM with a 4:19.94 that puts her second in the country. Her teammate Amanda Wager was also impressive with 29.09/1:02.65/2:14.97 in the breaststrokes, the latter of which also puts her second in D3. The men's side featured Tufts's Peter LaBarge going a season-best and almost PR 20.23 50 free, and Williams's Jacob Grover cracking the top 5 in the nation with a 54.34 100 breast.

🏊🏼 RELAY(S) OF THE WEEK 🏊‍♀️

Incarnate Word Men's 200 Free Relay - 1:19.52

This relay broke an eight year old school record from back when the Cardinals were challenging for D2 titles. Fabio Fasolo is obviously the catalyst here - he just barely missed his 50 free school record in the individual event (20.00) with a 20.06 prior to this relay. UIW is moving to the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation Conference (that's a mouthful!) this year, which means they take on the likes of UC-Santa Barbara and BYU, so they'll need to improve on this even more to make a mark come February.

🏊🏽‍♂️ WEEKEND PREVIEW 🏊🏼

Last couple of midseason invites coming your way this weekend:

The UNLV Invite features the hosts, the UCLA women, and a number of California schools such as Cal Baptist and Cal Poly. Most of these teams have already been at other, higher-profile invites (UNLV was in Minnesota, UCLA was at Ohio State), so the teams may be in varying states of readiness.

Tampa hosts the Spartan Invite. Along with the hosts, St. Leo, Lenoir-Rhyne, and West Florida all make regular appearances at D2 NCAAs, while Indian River is the behemoth of NJCAA swimming. Tampa's Mady Barnes versus WF's Nina Imboden should make for good racing in the backstrokes, while the Tampa men boast a strong middle-to-distance free group led by Louisville transfer Hayden Curley and freshman Barnabas Fluck.

We've got a bit of dual meet action going on as well - Georgia/Kentucky is the highlight, while Northwestern and Army head down to Florida to take on Miami in the sunshine. Also, D2 GLVC conference competitors Quincy, Maryville, and Missouri S&T head to north St. Louis to take on UMSL. This will most likely be the stiffest competition first-year program Quincy has faced in their short history.

Enjoying the College Swimming Roundup? Please share our newsletter.

And don't forget to click on a link and leave a comment!

• 👍 Super helpful thank you!

• 😐 Meh - it was ok.

• 👎 Next week better be better or I might hit the unsubscribe button.