The Texas Hall of Fame Invite was effectively a secondary short course National Championship, with two of the best college teams (Arizona and Texas), as well as a group of top post-grads from Longhorn Aquatics, like Ricky Berens, Garrett Weber-Gale, and Kathleen Hersey.
From a team scoring perspective, this meet had 7 full swimming teams in attendance: Arizona, Texas, Wisconsin, and Sydney University, as well as the North Texas, UCLA, and UC-Davis on the women’s sides.
Final Scores:
Men’s
1. University of Texas 799
2. Arizona, University of 670
3. University of Wisconsin 294
4. Sydney University 202
5. Purdue University 154
6. Longhorn Aquatics 143
7. California-Berkley 57
8. Wyoming, University of 50
9. University of Miami 39
10. Texas Christian University 29
Women’s
1. University of Texas 817
2. Arizona, University of 653
3. University of Wisconsin 439.5
4. University of California, Los 291
5. North Texas, University of 215
6. UC Davis 158
7. University of Miami 96.5
8. Sydney University 77
9. University of Houston 75
10. Purdue University 73
11. Wyoming, University of 54
12. Unattached 46
13. University of California Berke 24
14. Boston University 12
15. Harvard 2
Swimmers of the Meet
Women’s-Maggie Meyer (Wisconsin)- Two individual event wins (100 back, 200 back); two school records.
Men’s-Ricky Berens (Longhorn Aquatics)- Two individual event wins (100 fly, 200 free)
Sogar, So Good
Texas’ Laura Sogar continued her run of impressive performances in the 200 breaststroke with a winning mark of 2:07.82, which is the second best time in the country this year. Her prelims time of 2:07.43 marked the third time this season she has broken her own school record that she previously set at the Big 12 Championships last year. Sogar is definitely going to be in the mix at NCAA’s for a title in this event, despite being only a sophomore. She also swam a 59.07 in the 100 to win that event too.
Sibling Rivalry
Though USC’s Haley Anderson and Arizona’s Alyssa Anderson are swimming at different meets on opposite sides of the country (Haley was swimming at Short Course Nationals at Ohio State this weekend), the two were still going after each other toe-to-toe. While Haley shattered her older sister’s SC Nationals 1650 free meet record in Columbus, Alyssa got one back in Austin by knocking her sister off of the perch as the NCAA’s best 500 freestyler this season. Alyssa’ winning time of 4:37.94 at the Texas Invite now stands as the top time in the country ahead of her sister’s 4:38.54.
Prodigal Daughter
In Kathleen Hersey’s first meet since leaving the Texas NCAA program in favor of the Longhorn Aquatics club program, she showed up big in the 100 fly. She won the women’s 100 fly in 52.30, which would stand among the top 3 times in the country were she still swimming collegiately. Texas’ cupboard isn’t exactly left bare in fly—they had four swimmers under 54—but not having Hersey, who is swimming so well, will definitely hurt in March.
Dax Gets Over the Hill
As we predicted in our team preview, Texas sophomore Dax Hill is having a serious breakout season. In addition to finishing third in the 200 freestyle in 1:34.19, the third best mark in the country this year, he actually outsplit teammate Jimmy Feigen in the 100 free. This is a huge leap forward for a swimmer who couldn’t even crack the Big 12 scoring lineup for the Longhorns last year. Eddie Reese has taken a very raw talent and turned him into an elite swimmer.
Arizona 400 Medley Blazes
All of the talk around Arizona pre-season was about how much they lost. But those that they’ve brought back have done a great job of carrying on the torch this year. Their 400 medley relay at midseason is almost as fast as they were at NCAA’s last year, after posting the nation’s fastest time of 3:08.16. Their 200 free relay, also the fastest in the nation, put together a 1:17.66 that is only a tenth slower than they went last year. Despite cobbling together a bunch of little-known sprinters, including freshman Mitchell Friedemann who split 19.17, they are already looking better than they were last year in the sprint distance.
Men’s 200 Free in a Firework Photo Finish
Anyone watching the men’s 200 free who thought that the race was over at the 150 mark and started checking out the heat sheet for the next race missed out on one heck of a finish. At that point, Texas’ Dax Hill led the race, followed by Nimrod Shapira Bar-Or of Arizona and Texas-Ex Ricky Berens. Berens, however, really showed his form and strength to finish with a blazing 23.52 closing 50 to take the race in 1:33.49. The order of the top 3 totally reversed, in fact, with Bar-Or finishing second by a fingernail in 1:33.50, and Hill fading all the way to third, as previously mentioned. This was the race I was looking forward to the most in this meet, and it did not fail to live up to the hype.
Margo “Geer”s Up for 50 Free
Arizona freshman Margo Geer swam a 22.14 individual 50 free in Austin, which clears LSU’s Janie Trepp as the best in the nation. In fact, it was even faster than the finals times of Kara Lynn Joyce and Jessica Hardy, the top two finishers in Columbus, who will both be swimming in Dubai in two weeks.
Chitwood Burns the Backstrokes
Chitwood took firm control of both backstroke races: winning in times of 46.56/1:41.07, respectively. The 100 time is the nation’s second best this year (behind only a freak 46.15 relay leadoff from Ohio State’s Andrew Elliott at Nationals, which he couldn’t recreate in the individual) and the 200 time is the best by over half of a second. As an aside, Mitchell Friedemann had another great swim in the 100 backstroke of 46.82. This gives Arizona a 1-2 punch in the backstrokes that rivals that of Cal as the best in the country.
The Female Chitwood
Wisconsin’s Maggie Meyer was just as impressive as Chitwood, if not moreso, in pulling off a double victory in the backstrokes with both of the nation’s top backstroke times (52.39/1:51.59). On the weekend, Meyer sliced 3 seconds off of the 200 backstroke school record, and also led off the badgers 100 free relay in a school-record tying 48.70, and finished second in the 50. This was an all-around fantastic performance for the Badger senior.
Diving Duel
Purdue was one of the handful of teams that only sent their divers to this meet, and their All-American, All-World, All-Everything diver David Boudia put on quite a show at the Texas Swim Center. He comfortably won all three boards, but his best performance was on the platform: his specialty. There, he scored 537.65, just half-a-point off of his school record score, and put up totals of over 80 on every dive. On his last dive, he scored an amazing 99.9 on a forward 4 ½ somersault tuck, which ranks 3.7 on the DD table-making it among the most difficult dives you’ll see at the college level.
Texas women did quit good with some having bronchitis or strep. Without Hersey, it appears the women are swimming a lot harder as a group.
I wasn’t that impressed with Hersey’s performances. She used to dominate everything she swam and now she just barely wins the fly events. Her IM’s and backs and frees are pretty pedestrian. Sorry Kathleen, just my observations.
Margo Geer also had a pretty ridiculous 21.26 split on the 200 Medley Relay. If I’m not mistaken, it is the 2nd fastest textile split behind Maritza Correia (21.18).
Even in the techsuit era, I believe only Michele King (21.07) and Dana Vollmer (21.15) were faster. Lara Jackson always seemed to lead-off or swim fly. Not sure if anyone cares enough to dig deeper and fact check this.
Hmmm. I don’t know of anywhere that has a database of splits, but the best two that I can find are the two that you mentioned from King and Vollmer…Weir has flat-started a 21.27, but I can’t find anything else in the range of the splits you mentioned…weren’t a whole lot of 4×50 relays at the USA-Swimming level prior to about 2008.
Great find sharks.