The Texas A&M men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams hosted the three-day Texas A&M Invitational this weekend at the Student Rec Center Natatorium and finished beyond their own expectations.
“They take a lot of pride in this being our house,” said men’s coach Jay Holmes. “They’re mentally ready to come in and make some statements. We asked them to do that, they did that. We had good team depth. They just did the job.”
Aggie senior Andrew Sullivant won the 100 and 200-yard freestyle and contributed to a relay team that took first in the 200-yard freestyle.
The men’s team placed first in overall points with 1,332 for the weekend, finishing over Southern Methodist University (975 points), Louisiana State University (704) and the University of Louisiana-Monroe (699).
The women’s team had closer competition, but still came away as the point leaders with 1,424 points, over SMU (1,213), LSU (554) and the University of Arkansas (475).
Sophomore Kara Morelli received NCAA consideration times in several events, including the 400-yard individual medley (placed first, 4:17.90), 100-yard backstroke (placed fifth, 55.86) and 200-yard backstroke (placed second, 1:59.40).
“I went under two minutes on the 200 backstroke for the first time ever,” Morelli said. “The team did really well and we were expecting to swim really fast, but I think a lot of people swam a lot faster than they thought they would, including myself. A lot of us have already achieved goals we set for the whole season. It’s really exciting to see how fast we’re going to go at the end.”
Morelli said a big factor in the success was the atmosphere in College Station. She said having so many fans and parents present coupled with the domino effect of people swimming really quickly led to a great weekend for the teams.
“We swam extremely well. We’re always looking for season best times, and we certainly had a lot of that, and some lifetime bests, and some NCAA cuts,” said women’s head coach Steve Bultman. “The girls had some high goals for themselves, and we gave them a little bit of rest and said let’s see what we can do.”
Another outstanding swimmer for the women’s team was senior Danielle Townsend, who received NCAA consideration times in the 50, 100 and 200-yard freestyle and an automatic NCAA qualification in the 200-yard IM.