Olympians Berens and Breeja to Headline Texas Senior Circuit #2

Thanks to Scott Scofield for passing along the psych sheets.

A large portion of the United States’ national and international teams have ties to the state of Texas, either through birth-right or through training at one of the two elite college programs in the state, the University of Texas and Texas A&M.

Friday Psych Sheets.
Saturday Psych Sheets.
Sunday Psych Sheets.

Every year, the state’s different LSC’s get together and run the Texas Senior Circuit series, which is a high-level meet designed to give an almost grand-prix-like feel without having to travel too far from home.

The 2nd stop for this year’s meet will be hosted (in long course) at A&M’s natatorium this coming weekend (June 7th-9th), and several Olympians, as well as other high-profile swimmers, will be at the meet.

Among the top-tier of entries are A&M’s two female Olympians, Breeja Larson and Cammile Adams. For Larson, this will be her highest-profile meet since the Mesa Grand Prix in early April. She has swum a few more local meets (within an hour of College Station where she’s training), that have included a 32.50 in the 50 breast, 1:10.2 in the 100 breast, and a 2:33.9 in the 200 breast. There was likely little emphasis put on these races, though, so expect to see better this weekend.

Among her competition at the event will be Laura Sogar, who will be gunning along with Larson for one of the four breaststroke spots at this summer’s World Championships. Sogar’s best event is the 200, and Larson’s is the 100, but both are still plenty good at the opposite to make these races interesting. Gretchen Jacques, and Romy Landeck will also be around to make things interesting.

As for Adams, she’s entered in this meet, even though she’s spending the summer training at SwimMAC Carolina. We’ll see if she ends up coming back into town for the meet or not.

Regardless of whether she is or not, there’s some solid potential in the women’s 100 fly, with U.S. Olympic Trials finalist Caroline McElhany racing against Texas standout Ellen Lobb, Mexican Olympian Rita Medrano, and Canadian Trials finalist Paige Miller.

Also look for results for Madisyn Cox, who is one of the prized recruits of Carol Capitani’s first recruited class at Texas.

On the men’s side, we could get some great freestyle battles between Ricky Berens and Dax Hill, both of whom are former Longhorn All-Americans (and Berens is, of course, an Olympic gold medalist as well.) They’ll be joined, at least in the shorter end of that, by Garrett Weber-Gale, who has already committed to swim for the U.S. Maccabiah Games roster this summer.

Michael McBroom, the 2011 NCAA Champion in the mile, will also swim his second long course meet of the season after a very good summer debut in Charlotte (1:50/3:50/15:03 in the 200/400/1500 freestyles.) He will stretch down into the 200 at this meet, but among his best competition through the middle distance will be his Texas teammate Jake Ritter, who is ascribed to the American World University Games squad this summer.

And for anyone who is interested in Masters’ Swimming, don’t miss out on 52-year old David Guthrie, who will mix things up with the kids at this meet. He’s ranked as high as 4th in the 50 breaststroke and 6th in the 100 breaststroke, and will also race the 200. Guthrie has many, many Masters World Records, including the 100 (1:09.07) and 200 (2:32.55) in his current 50-54 category, in long course.

Other big names at this meet include:

• Karlee Bispo (Texas post-grad)
• Christian Schurr (Former Texas All-American; Mexican Olympian)
• Kyle Troskot (Texas A&M, Canadian, better in long course than short course)
• Sarah Denninghoff (Texas)
• Sarah Henry (Texas A&M)