LSU Gold

Lady Tigers Break 800-Yard Freestyle Pool Record

by Tanner Craft
Day Two Results +0
Lady Tigers Break 800-Yard Freestyle Pool Record

BATON ROUGE – The No. 25 LSU women’s swim team participated in time trial races Saturday morning along with Houston and Rice.  Overall, six LSU swimmers set new career-bests and a pool record was broken in the 800-yard freestyle relay.  

“I liked the format we chose to do this year,” said LSU head swim coach Dave Geyer.  “We just opened things up today for all three programs and we saw some really good performances.  With us being two weeks out from the SEC Championships, we needed a day like this as a program.”

New career-bests came fast and early as Brittany Thompson touched the wall in 1:57.98 in the 200-Yard Backstroke, the first event of the day.  

In the same event, Katie Smith set a new career-low with a 1:59.69.  

In the 100-Yard Breaststroke, Lauren Thompson set a new personal best with a time of 1:03.11.

Two personal records were set in the 100-Yard Butterfly as Nicole Rozier and Lia Joslin touched the wall in 54.00 and 55.65, respectively.

In the last event of the day, Leyre Casarin set a new career mark with a 23.24 in the 50-Yard Freestyle.  

Along with the personal career-bests, Saturday also included the breaking of a 22-year-old record.  The team of Alyssa Helak, Kit Hanley, Ellie Baldwin, and Tennyson Henry swam the 800-Yard Freestyle Relay in 7:20.19 – breaking the previous record of 7:31.15.

“That race will definitely give those women confidence going into Championship Season,” said Geyer.  “It is nice to see the previous record get to come down and it is really great for Tennyson to get a pool record in her senior season.” 

On the Platform, Aimee Wilson completed the weekend sweep as the freshman dove to a score of 265.50 on the platform. This was a career-high for Wilson as she passed her previous score of 246.85.  

Lizzie Cui finished in third place with a 236.25.

Jolie Blodgett set a new career-high as she scored of 204.00 to finish fourth.

“We added platform today to get another dress rehearsal with that event,” said LSU head dive coach Doug Shaffer. “In conference we do three events over a period of five days and this weekend we did three over two days so it was good to get that last push heading towards the SEC Championships.”

The Tigers will now have two weeks to prepare for the SEC Championships that begin on Tuesday, February 19 in Athens, Georgia.  

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