The Texas A&M women’s swimming and diving team will travel to Rice for an outdoor meet against the Owls on Saturday. This will be the Aggies’ last meet of the fall. They will return to the pool on Jan. 6 against the Missouri Tigers.
A&M head coach Steve Bultman stressed that this meet is crucial in breaking up the two-month long drought the Aggies would otherwise face.
“We don’t want to go from the middle of November until Jan. 6 without racing,” Bultman said. “It’s good to get up and race. We’ll have some people swim some different events, not exactly their best event all the way up and down. It’ll be fun to get an opportunity to race.”
The No. 3 Aggies are 3-1 with their only loss coming from No. 2 Texas. The team is fresh off a first place victory at the Art Adamson Invitational on Nov. 16-18, where they defeated No. 1 Stanford by a margin of 1,273.50-1,053.
At the invitational, four Aggies achieved NCAA “A” cuts: Beryl Gastaldello in the 50 free (21.69), Sydney Pickrem in the 200 IM (1:53.38) and 200 breast (2:05.56), Lisa Bratton in the 200 back (1:50.10) and Bethany Galat in the 200 breast (2:06.52) and 400 IM (4:02.85).
“One of our goals in that meet was to swim fast, to do some good times, but also to get people qualified for NCAAs,” Bultman said. “We feel like we have 11 or 12 girls qualified for NCAAs, which that’s big.”
The Rice Owls are 4-1, and coming off a second place finish at the Phill Hansel Invitational. The meet will kick off at noon at the Rice Competition pool.