Florida’s Leah Braswell Out of SEC Champs Per Updated Psych Sheets

SEC – Women Swimming & Diving + Men’s Diving

• Wednesday, February 17 – Saturday, February 20, 2021
• W Swimming: Gabrielsen Natatorium – Athens, GA (Eastern Time Zone)
• W&M Diving: Mizzou Aquatics Center – Columbia, MO (Central Time Zone)
• Defending Champion: Tennessee (1x) (results)
• Live results
• Live Video – SEC Network
• Championship Central
• Psych Sheets (UPDATED)

When the last version of the SEC Women’s Championship psych sheets were released, it included swimmers both over-entered in events, and teams with entries beyond the allowable roster limits.

While teams can pick and choose over-entered athletes’ events day-by-day throughout the meet, a new psych sheet cut to just the number of athletes allowed per roster has been released, and one big name is missing.

Florida distance freestyler Leah Braswell is no longer on the psych sheets. Braswell, a junior, finished third in the mile and ninth in the 500 free at the 2020 SEC Championships, along with scoring in the 200 free C-final. Braswell has not competed since Florida’s mid-season invite meet in November 2020.

Update: the University of Florida says that Braswell is absent due to “health concerns,” but didn’t elaborate on what the nature of those concerns are.

Mid-season, Braswell went 4:38.69 in the 500 free and 16:15.63 in the 1650 free. Though she won’t be racing at SECs, she will still likely get an NCAA invite, as both times were under the invite cut-off last year, and her 500 time this season currently has her fifth in the nation. Florida’s top swimmers in her absence in those events are sophomore Tylor Mathieu in the 500 (9th seed – 4:43.93) and freshman Elise Bauer in the mile (5th seed – 16:07.30).

Swimmers were tested for COVID-19 this morning in Athens, and one SEC coach told SwimSwam that they hadn’t received test results yet as of this evening. The coach also said that it was unlikely that any team had received their results prior to the production of the new psych sheet.

When psych sheets first dropped for the split-gender SEC Championship meets about a week ago, there were at least 33 women and 42 men entered over the 22-person squad limit for the meets. Due to those extra swimmers, there were 249 extra individual entries on the women’s side and 240 for the men.

The newest psych sheets for the women’s meet are still not a final glimpse at who’s swimming what. These psych sheets reflect teams at their pared-down rosters, but swimmers who are racing at SECs may still be over-entered with more than three individual events.

The meet starts tomorrow, with a morning time trials session slated for 10 am ET and the first finals session, with the 200 medley relay and 800 free relay, beginning at 5 pm ET.