CLEVELAND, Miss. – The No. 15 West Florida women’s swimming and diving team leads the nine-team field after the first day at the New South Intercollegiate Swimming and Diving Conference Championships hosted by Delta State. The Argonauts finished the day with 290 points, while No. 23 St. Cloud State scored 253 and No. 13 Delta State 240.
“We’re thrilled with our start to this meet,” said UWF head coach Andrew Hancock. “We know that tonight’s events represent only a small portion of the entire meet. We’re happy to be in first, but we know we have a lot of work to do, particularly in the preliminary sessions. We had some terrific times today all across the board, lifetime bests all around. They really set us up to be in a good position in this meet moving forward. It was a great team effort on day one.”
The Argos are in the lead despite not earning a first place finish in any of the three events on Wednesday, but their depth in each race proved to be valuable.
UWF placed second, third, fifth, seventh and 12th in the 1,000-yard freestyle to help vault the team to first place. Freshman Angelina Gallastegui (Brandon, Fla.) led the way, finishing second with a school record and NCAA B-cut time of 10:07.37. She was right behind the event winner, Melanie Tombers from Delta State who finished just over second faster at 10:06.09. Madeline Pitt (Trussville, Ala.) was UWF’s third place finisher with a B-cut time of 10:16.34, and she was followed by Phoebe Briant (Gainesville, Fla.) in fifth (10:36.13), Karisa Kostecki (Lithia, Fla.) in seventh (10:40.38) and Allison Lehr (Valrico, Fla.) in 12th (10:59.67).
The Argos also placed well in the night’s two relay events, the 800-yard freestyle relay and the 200-yard medley relay. UWF’s A-team in the 800 free included Peggy de Villiers (Somerset West, South Africa), Anna-Marie Macht (Markkleeberg, Germany), Danica Burnett (Perth, Australia) and Sophia Oliva (Plantation, Fla.), and the four combined to swim a school record and NCAA B-cut time of 7:30.34 while finishing second in the event. In the leadoff role, de Villiers swam a 200 free split of 1:51.55 to break her own school record and post a B-cut of her own.
UWF’s A-team in the 200-yard medley relay finished third and included Nicole Machado (Belo Horizonte, Brazil), Gabrielle Spangenberg (Chuluota, Fla.), Emily Mitchell (Allen Park, Mich.) and Mariana de Paula (Santos, Brazil). Those four combined to post a time of 1:45.05, marking an NCAA B-cut and coming less than a second away from breaking a school record.
The Thursday prelims will start at 9:30 a.m. and will include the 500 free, 200 individual medley and 50 free. The evening session starting at 5 p.m. will include finals for those three events, plus the 200 free relay. Thursday will also feature the first women’s diving event of the meet; the 3-meter diving prelims will start at 1 p.m., and the top eight will advance to the finals during the evening session.