BATON ROUGE – The No. 25-ranked LSU women’s swimming & diving team swept Day One as the Lady Tigers defeated Houston 193-107 and Rice 215-79 inside the LSU Natatorium.
“For being two weeks out from the SEC Championships I thought we were a little all over the place today in terms of execution,” said LSU head swim coach Dave Geyer. “With that being said, there were pieces I saw today that show that with these next couple of weeks of fine tuning, we will be ready for Conference Championships.”
Summer Spradley won two events on Day One, earning big points for her team in the process.
“I was really excited to race today,” said Spradley. “Coming off a harder week of training with lighter practices, it was just fun to get out there and race.”
Spradley won the 50-yard freestyle with a time of 23.38 and the 100-yard breaststroke touching the wall in 1:02.69.
“Summer definitely stopped some of the bleeding in the first half of the meet with the 100-yard breaststroke and then coming back maybe ten minutes later to win the 50-yard freestyle was really impressive,” said Geyer. “She’s been a little under the weather recently so we weren’t really sure what we were going to get from her but it paid off well for sure.”
Natalie Kucsan set a new career best as the freshman won the 100-yard freestyle with a time of 50.63.
Gabrielle Pick and Nicole Rozier both won events as Pick won the 200-yard butterfly with a time of 2:00.33 and Rozier won the 200-yard individual medley with a time of 2:02.03.
Tennyson Henry touched the wall in 4:59.44 in the 500-yard freestyle to take the gold.
On the springboard, Aimee Wilson swept the events. The freshman won the three-meter with a score of 346.95. She followed that performance up with a 320.03 on the one-meter to claim the victory.
Lizzie Cui placed second in both events as the senior dove to scores of 346.95 and 318.83 on the three-meter and one-meter, respectively.
Jolie Blodgett placed fifth on the three-meter with a 260.63 and third in the one-meter with a 266.48.
“We are right where we need to be,” said LSU diving head coach Doug Shaffer. “Today was an opportunity to practice our routines and continue to improve but it’s not the SEC Championships. With that in mind, today was a great step in the building process to the championships. We definitely have things we will continue to work on but I like where we are at going forward into conference championships, zones and nationals.”
LSU will be back in action tomorrow at 10 a.m. as the Tigers will be participating in time trial races.
For more information and updates on LSU Swimming and Diving please visit LSUsports.net, ‘like’ us on Facebook at LSU Swimming and Diving or follow us on Twitter and Instagram @LSUSwimDive.