Only Four Texas Pool Records Survived 2019 NCAAs

• 2019 MEN’S NCAA SWIMMING & DIVING CHAMPIONSHIPS
• Wednesday, March 27 – Saturday, March 30
• Lee & Joe Jamail Texas Swimming Center, Austin, Texas
• Prelims 10 AM / Finals 6 PM (Central Time)
• Defending champion: Texas (4x) (2018 results)
• Psych Sheet
• Live Stream
• Live results

They say everything’s bigger in Texas, and the pool record board at the Texas Swim Center is certainly pretty hard to miss.  As a pool that has hosted a ton of big meets, many of the pool records that stood before last week were current or former U.S. Open or American Records.

We’d been keeping a tally on which pool records fell (Part 1 and Part 2). Only one of the events contested on the final day of competition did not result in a new pool record, and that was the 200 breast. In the end, only four pool records survived the four days of competition, and one of those survivors, the 1000 free, wasn’t even contested, although technically it could’ve been broken as part of the 1650.

Here’s a look at the updated pool record board, followed by a closer look at which records survived the final day, and which ones haven’t.

Day 4 Pool Record Recap

Records Broken

• Dean Farris‘ 40.80 broke Tate Jackson‘s 100 free pool record from the 2018 Texas Invite, which appears to have been the freshest pool record heading into NCAAs.
• Felix Auboeck recovered from a rough meet the first few days to bring it when it counted, downing Connor Jaeger‘s 1650 pool record from 2014.
• John Shebat reclaimed the 200 back pool record for Texas by breaking Ryan Murphy‘s time of 1:37.35. Murphy’s swim set a 17-18 national age group record and a NCAA record when he did it at the 2014 NCAA  Championships.
• Andreas Vazaios‘s 1:38.57 from the 200 fly prelims broke Jack Conger‘s pool record of 1:39.17 from the Big 12 Championships. At the time, Conger’s performance was the 3rd-fastest swim ever.
• Finally, the Longhorns smashed the 400 free relay record, swimming the 3rd-fastest time in history as took down the pool record by over three seconds. The previous mark of 2:48.33 was set by Auburn at the 2014 NCAA Championships.

Records Survived

• Kevin Cordes‘ 1:48.66 in the 200 breast was as American and US Open Record when he smashed it at the 2014 NCAA Championships, and Andrew Seliskar just came up shy of the mark, winning in 1:48.70, making him the 3rd-fastest performer ever in the event.
• As we said, while the 1000 free is considered an official event by both the NCAA and USA Swimming, it is not contested at the NCAA Championships. Still, someone technically could’ve broken the pool record this week while swimming the 1650, although to do that, they’d either have to be swimming at an other-worldly pace, or intentionally go after the record while sacrificing the rest of the swim, neither of which would make sense from a competition standpoint. So, former Longhorn’s Clark Smith‘s record appeared safe, and sure enough, no one came within 10 seconds of Smith’s pool mark of 8:33.93 over the initial 1000, with 1650 champion Felix Auboeck‘s opening split of 8:45.17 the fastest in the field. Smith’s time from 2015 still stands as the American and NCAA records.