Feb. 13, 2018
ACC Swimming & Diving Championships Central Page
THE FLATS – The Georgia Tech swimming and diving women’s team hits the road this week to compete at the 2018 Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships from Feb. 14-17 at the Greensboro Aquatic Center in Greensboro, N.C. The men’s ACC Diving Championships will also take place this week in Greensboro.
On Wednesday, Feb. 14, the championships will begin at 10 a.m. with the diving preliminaries. The swimming relay events will begin at 4:15 p.m. The finals of the women’s 1-meter and men’s 3-meter events will start at 4:30 p.m.
For the other three days of competition, Feb. 15-17, the prelims will take place in the morning session beginning at 10 a.m. The finals will be held in the night session beginning at 6 p.m. each night.
“We are ready for the challenge that lies ahead. Our women’s team has been working hard this season at improving each and every time out that we compete,” stated head coach Courtney Shealy Hart. “Now it is time to put all that hard work – the early morning workouts, the early practices, the days with two practices – it is all time to put that into fruition and for us to compete all four days like we are capable of competing. We’re excited to push ourselves against the nation’s best competition in the ACC and look forward to a great championship meet.”
A total of six ACC teams are ranked in the top 25 for the women’s Division I CSCAA Poll, with three landing in the top 15 with No. 7 Virginia, No. 10 NC State and No. 14 Louisville. North Carolina comes in at No. 18, while Notre Dame (No. 19) and Duke (No. 25) round out the ACC teams in the top 25 poll.
The NC State Wolfpack are the defending 2017 champions, edging the Virginia Cavalier women who had won nine consecutive ACC Championships from 2008-16.
The Yellow Jackets will look to build on its 10th-place finish from last season at the 2017 ACC Championships in which the women’s team totaled 391 points. The previous year in 2016, the Jackets placed 11th with a total of 356 points.
At the 2017 conference championships, which were held in the McAuley Aquatic Center on the campus of Georgia Institute of Technology, the women’s team totaled 17 school records over the four days of competition.
Led by Iris Wang, who ranks third in the ACC in the 100 free and fifth in the 200 free this season, the Yellow Jackets have already set six school records in 2017-18. Wang has bested her own school records in both the 100 free (48.23) and 200 free (1:45.67) events, while sophomores Emily Ilgenfritz and Caroline Lee have both set new Tech records in the 500 free (4:46.38) and 200 back (1:56.42) events, respectively.
Veterans Laura Branton (100 and 200 fly) and Kira de Bruyn (400 IM), who both set records at the ACC Championships last season, as well as fellow upperclassmen Kaitlin Kitchens, Morgan Lyons, Sara Gilbert, Megan Young and Florina Ilie, will look to help lead a young core of Jackets at this year’s event including Kristen Hepler, Tamir Gonen, Camille Long, Catriona MacGregor, Chloe Miller, Celine Nugent, Allie Paschal and Lindsay Wallace.
On the boards, the Jackets will have a trio of underclassmen competing in sophomore Carly Doi and freshmen Camryn Hidalgo and Paige Gohr. Hidalgo has been the top diver all season long for the Jackets and has posted new school records in both the 1-meter (331.35) and 3-meter (362.10) diving events.
Doi has the second-highest score of the season for Tech on the 3-meter springboard (312.60), while Gohr has posted the second-best mark on the year for the Jackets in both the 1-meter (272.63) and platform (198.15) dives.
“We are looking for our male divers to really get our men’s team off on the right track in the diving events this week,” continued Hart. “Matt [Casillas], Nolan [Mallet], Henry [Carman] and Jacob [Kreider] are excited about returning to the boards and competing in the ACC Championships.”
Junior Matt Casillas will look to lead the Yellow Jackets on the diving boards for the men’s team, as the ACC Diver of the Week on Oct. 31 has been the top scorer for the Jackets in every event this season. Casillas, who posted a new school record in the 3-meter dive with a score of 424.95 last time out versus Emory on Jan. 27, also leads the ACC in the 3-meter dive heading into the championship meet this week.
Like Casillas, fellow junior Nolan Mallet will be competing in his third ACC Championship meet this week, while a duo of freshmen in Henry Carman and Jacob Kreider will be making their ACC Championships debut. Mallet, who has been injured all spring, has posted the second-best score for Tech this season on the platform dive (262.55). Carman has recorded the second-best score for the Jackets this season in both the 1-meter (339.45) and 3-meter (359.7) dives, while Kreider has turned in the third-highest mark this season for Tech in both the 3-meter (347.55) and platform (222.20) events.
Live results for both the prelims and finals of the conference championship meet can be found HERE on the ACC Championship Central page.
The finals of each day are slated to begin at 6 p.m. The final three evening sessions, Feb. 15-17, will also be streamed live via the ACC Network Extra and can be found online with the links below:
Feb. 15 – Finals at 6 p.m. ( Click Here )
Feb. 16 – Finals at 6 p.m. ( Click Here )
Feb. 17 – Finals at 6 p.m. ( Click Here )
For the latest information on Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets Swimming & Diving, follow us on Twitter (@GTSwimDive), Instagram (@GTSwimDive), and Facebook (Georgia Tech Swimming & Diving) or visit us at www.ramblinwreck.com.
