Nov. 20, 2010
ATLANTA – Behind 32 men’s and women’s swimmers and divers advancing to the finals, the Georgia Tech maintained their position at the Georgia Tech Invitational Saturday at the GT Aquatic Center. The Jackets earned six top-10 finishes on the day to finish in fifth place (386)on the men’s side and sixth place (213 points) on the women’s side after the end of two days of competition.
Six swimmers advanced to the finals in both the men’s 100-Fly and 100-Breast while five out of the six men’s swimmers competing in the preliminaries, moved on in the 100-Back on the day.
“Today both teams were able to accomplish more career and season bests,” said head coach Courtney Shealy Hart, “which means that we gave it everything that we had. I am looking for the team to continue to swim well tomorrow and with the competition that we have ahead of us we will be pushing ourselves hard.”
Lexi Weber was outstanding for the women , setting a new career best time for the second night in a row. She battled to the B-Final victory in the 200-Free, edging her closest opponent, Julia Henkel of Florida State, by .22 seconds for the 11th place finish, career best time, and third-fastest time in GT history.
The Jackets notched three of their top-10 scores in the 100-Breast as Matt Vaughan led the way wit4h a fifth place, 56.13 finish tallying the ninth fastest time in GT history. Max Randolph followed behind him with and eighth place finish, 52.13, while Anton Lagerqvist touched the wall a tenth of a second later in ninth at 57.23.
Bo Hatchett led the way for Tech in the 100-Back earning a seventh place finish with a time of 50.69. Matt Tang rounded out the top-10 in the event coming in at 52.00 seconds flat. In the B-Final, Garrett Robberson edged out his competition for an 11th place finish and time of 50.79 while Max Randolph took 19th with a time of 52.93 and Nick Colletti rounded out the pack with a 22nd place finish and time of 51.98.
In the women’s 100-Back, Jessie Mason’s 18th place finish notched a seventh-best GT time, touching the wall in 56.24. Heidi Hatteberg rounded out the scorers with a 20th place finish in 27.64.
Freshman Caroline Fore finished in 30th for the Jackets in the 400-IM finals coming across in 4:29.76, but her preliminary time of 4:29.70 puts her in sixth place in the GT record books for the medley race.
The Georgia Tech relay teams were also outstanding on the day. The women’s 200-Medley team of Mason, Morgan Trickett, Keren Siebner and Weber, notched the third fastest time in school history with a 1:44.95 finish while their male counterparts tallied the ninth fastest time with a 1:31.03, fifth place performance.
Both of the 800-Free Relay squads took fifth place to round out the night. Weber, Hailey White, Siebner, and Sarah Broadley put together a time of 7:31.46 for the Jackets, which ranks fifth all-time in the record books while Tang, Zach Tillman, Ralph Long and Travis Wagner finished in 6:46.95
In diving competition, Brandon Makinson and Chris Khosravi notched some points for the Jackets for the second day. Makinson earned an 11th place finish in the 3-meter dive with 317.15 points while Khosravi wasn’t far behind earning a 13th place finish and tallying 312.45 points.
Ashley Hardy took 24th in the one-meter dive recording 216.85 while Sarah Roethel earned a 37th place finish with 150.55 points tallied on the day.
The Jackets will close out the meet, and their fall season Sunday in the final day of the Georgia Tech Invitational. The meet will begin one hour earlier at 9 a.m. as the preliminaries kick off with the 200-Back. The mile swim will begin around 11:30 a.m. while the meet concludes, as usual, with the 400-Free Relay.
