On day three of the swimming and diving SEC Championships, the Texas A&M men’s and women’s teams swam and dove to yet another record-breaking day in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Senior Sarah Gibson, who’s been breaking records since the start of the SEC Championships, won the 100m fly in 50.93 — setting a new pool and SEC record. Texas A&M Head coach Steve Bultman said he likes how well his team has been swimming through the first three days of competition.
“We’ve been doing a good job in the morning sessions to get people qualified and then moving up a little bit at night,” Bultman told 12thman.com. “It’s been good and I’m proud of the way that we are competing. We have two more days and four more sessions, and we just have to continue to race well in the morning and get the position that we need in the finals.”
Sophomore Sydney Pickrem and junior Bethany Galat finished 1-2 in the 400m IM in times of 4:02.25 and 4:03.88 respectively, for the second-straight year. Pickrem’s swim was the second-fastest in school history and broke the previous record of 4:03.27, set in the 2012 SEC Championships.
Three other Aggies swam in the 400m IM,sophomore Monika Gonzalez-Hermosillo who placed 6th in a lifetime best of 4:07.90, junior Lisa Bratton (4:07.01) who won the B final and junior Esther Gonzalez finished in 23rd place. The combined 400m IM times earned the Aggies 106 points.
After three days of competition, the women still have a strong hold on first place with 729 points followed by Georgia (601) and Auburn (493) to round out the top-three.
The men also had another record-breaking day in Knoxville, this time on the diving board. In winning the three-meter dive, junior Tyler Henschel broke a school and meet record at 478.40 points.
After jumping out to the lead in the preliminary round, Henschel needed to score over 80 points in the finals after Juan Celaya Hernandez of LSU received 99.45 points on his last dive. In his final dive, Henschel was able to win out by earning a score of 88.35.
Henschel said thanks in part to his vision, or lack-thereof, he was able to not focus on the scoreboard and finish out his final dive.
“I knew going into it that I was capable of winning, but that I was going to have to some serious damage. I knew that every single dive had to be my very best,” Henschel said to 12thman.com. “As the event kept progressing, I tried to stay cool and collected. I’m sort of blind so I can’t actually see the scores on the scoreboard, but I knew that Juan had done one of the hardest dives in the world – the triple out – and he scored 99 points on that. So I just stayed calm and do my final dive like normal and try to come out on top. And that exactly what happened and I couldn’t be more proud of myself.”
Junior Jonathan Tybur placed 22nd in the 400m IM in a lifetime best of 3:50.97, moving himself up to 6th place on A&M’s top-10 list for that race. In placing 18th overall, senior Turker Ayar swam a lifetime best in the 100m fly at 46.79.
Following three days of action, the men moved down to 5th place at 414 points, with Florida (759.5) and Georgia (537) holding first and second place.
Competition will continue tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. with the 200 fly preliminaries and will conclude at 6 p.m. with the 400m medley relay.
