NCAA Division 1 Women's Swimming and Diving Championship: Day one – Preview
National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division 1 Women’s Swimming and Diving Championship will start tomorrow at Austin, Texas. There seems to be a balance in the major events on day one of the championship, but there can be another surprising
performance like Florida defeated Stanford in last year’s championship.
Day one of the championship will conclude with the commencement of the 200-yard free relay, 500-yard freestyle, 200-yard Individual Medley, one-metre diving and the 400-yard medley relay.
The championship will begin with the 200-yard freestyle relay among the top 15 teams, where the first seven teams have a time between 1:28.00 and 1:28.99 minutes. Texas secured the first spot in a qualification time of 1:28.15 minutes, followed by Auburn
in the second place in a time of 1:28.25 minutes and Stanford in the third position in 1:28.54 minutes. The teams of Cal Berkeley, Georgia, Arizona and Louisiana, then follow them in chronological order for their qualifying positions in the swim. Stanford
is expected to win the race unlike any other team, as they have three swimmers among the top 30 rankers in their relay team.
The next event of tomorrow’s championship will be the 500-yard freestyle race. The race has defending champion, Georgia’s Allison Schmitt, on the fourth spot with a qualification time of 4:37.06 minutes. The fastest qualification time was scored by Schmitt’s
team-member, Shannon Vreeland, in a time of 4:36.28 minutes ahead of Towson’s Meredith Budner in 4:36.85 minutes and UNC’s Stephanie Peacock with a time of 4:36.86 minutes. Schmitt is still the most favourite swimmer of the event because of her experience
and wonderful win, last year.
The 500-yard freestyle will be followed by the 200-yard IM, where Katinka Hosszu is the number one swimmer for all Individual Medley events. She is comfortably on top of the qualification table in a time of 1:53.47 minutes, followed by Georgia’s Morgan Scroggy
in second place with a time of 1:54.58 minutes and Caitlin Leverenz of Cal Berkeley in a time of 1:54.97 seconds.
Next will be the one-metre diving competition, which includes three-metre diving champion, Kelci Bryant. She will be facing a tough competition from previous NCAA championship finalists, Erin Mertz and Taryn Zack.
The last event of the day will be the 400-yard medley relay. The event has Cal Berkeley’s relay team on top position with a qualification time of 3:28.99 minutes, which is comfortably ahead of the second qualifiers, Texas, who clocked in a time of 3:30.52
minutes. Texas is not far away from the third qualifying team, Tennessee, who secured the third qualifying position in a time of 3:30.90 minutes. Texas A&M relay team is on the fourth spot with a difference of just 0.04 seconds from the previous finisher,
recording a time of 3:31.08 minutes.
Every event of the championship will encounter close swims but the defending champions, Florida, seem to be far away from the podium in all events on the first day of the championship.
Tags: