BATON ROUGE, La. – The LSU women’s swimming and diving team returned to Baton Rouge for the home opener Thursday inside the LSU Natatorium to face conference foe Arkansas, where the Razorbacks emerged victorious, 151-149, over the Tigers.
LSU displayed a strong back half of the meet, touching the wall first in six of the final nine events, including the LSU ‘A’ relay team in the 400-yard freestyle relay out-touching Arkansas’s top relay team.
The Tigers opened the meet with three consecutive second-place finishes before Katarina Milutinovich touched the wall first in the 100-yard backstroke with a time of 55.15. In the diving well, Montserrat Gutierrez Lavenant lifted the Tigers by claiming first place in both the one-meter and three-meter with respective scores of 300.23 and 342.60.
In the aforementioned back half of the meet, Milutinovich claimed the first victory in the 100-yard freestyle with a time of 50.58. Sofia Sartori continued the strong second half for LSU with a win in the 200-yard backstroke, clocking a time of 2:02.42. Jenna Bridges joined Sartori and Milutinovich by touching the wall first in the 500-yard freestyle by finishing with a time of 4:58.01.
LSU finished the women’s only meet in the 400-yard freestyle relay, winning the event with a final time of 3:22.74.
On the diving side, other than Gutierrez Lavenant’s performance, Maggie Buckley claimed second on three-meter (319.65) and third on one-meter (297.23). Helle Tuxen finished the meet by finishing second on one-meter (298.20) and fourth on three-meter (276.30).
The Tigers return to action Nov. 4 when LSU travels to Florida State to take on the Seminoles and the University of Alabama in a tri-team meet. The meet is scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. local time and 9 a.m. CT.