COLUMBIA, S.C. — The LSU swimming and diving team begins Southeastern Conference action at 10 a.m. CDT Saturday as the Tigers take on South Carolina in a dual meet at the Carolina Natatorium.
The meet will be the first competition for the women’s team, which returns 18 letterwinners from a squad that earned its highest NCAA Championship finish since 2001 with 17th place last March.
The men’s team returns to action after going down to the wire with No. 2 Stanford in a training meet on Sept. 14. The Cardinal needed to capture the final event of the meet to avoid an upset. With LSU trailing by seven points, Stanford used a 1-3 finish to win by a 139-123 margin.
Despite the defeat, the Tigers created a favorable early season impression. Freshman Luis Gonzalez swept both distance freestyle events, and returning junior All-American Julius Gloeckner won the 200 free and 400 individual medley.
“You have to be satisfied taking it down to the final relay against the No. 2 team in the nation,” said head coach Adam Schmitt. “It is so early in the season and we are in heavy training mode.”
The women’s team features four returning All-Americans from a season ago. Juniors Katie Gilmore, Katherine Noland and Sabrina Messmer recorded two NCAA top-16 finishes last season in the 200 free relay and 200 medley relay. Together they shattered school records in both of those events.
“They have their own goals and how they want to improve,” said Schmitt. “If we do what they want to do, we will be fine. I want to go higher than 17th (at NCAA Championships).”
Saturday’s competition is also the first for the LSU divers. The women’s team returns two-time All-American Rachel Ware. Ware was the 2006-07 SEC Female Freshman Diver of the Year and became only the third freshman in school history to record multiple All-America honors in the same season.
SEC medalist Paige Brown returns as do junior men’s divers Nathan Schreiber and Niko Dalman. Dalman received a medical redshirt last season but is expected to be full strength all season. Freshman Michael Neubacher rounds out the list of divers.
Diving coach Doug Shaffer, who begins his sixth season at LSU, said the South Carolina meet will be used as a measuring stick to see where the team is after a rigorous preseason of training.
“It is an opportunity to compete and go head-to-head versus a good opponent and get a gauge on where we are,” said Shaffer. “Our goals are to work on the things that we have been building up to at this point in the year. It will be a good evaluation on what adjustments we need to be able to make for the rest of the season.”
Shaffer credited strength and conditioning coach Robbie Yellot for preparing the team for the challenges that lie ahead.
“Our preseason has gone really well,” said Shaffer. “Robbie, our new strength coach, has done a fabulous job and the best in my history here at LSU. That is going to really help us in the later part of the season.”
LSU leads the overall series with South Carolina, 7-5, with all 12 of those decisions coming in Baton Rouge. Saturday marks the first trip to Columbia for the Tigers.
The two teams last competed in 2004 when the Gamecocks defeated both the LSU men and women in Baton Rouge. The Tiger men have won two out of the last three meetings against South Carolina, while the Lady Tiger women have captured three out of the last four decisions versus the Gamecocks.
South Carolina fell to Virginia Tech in its season opener on Oct. 5 in Columbia.