The FGCU women’s swimming and diving team (9-1, 3-0 CCSA) won 10 of 11 events to cruise past B1G foe Nebraska on Saturday morning by a final score of 126-77. Katie Armitage, Emma Svensson and Lani Cabrera all picked up multiple individual victories to pace the Eagles who continue to pick up big victories during this 2014-15 campaign.
“We’ve had a rough week with a lot of sickness on the team,” head coach Neal Studd said. “This was one of those days where the girls just kind of had to dig deep and step up and in the end we got the job done real well. It’s always great to beat a big school like Nebraska. The head coach, Pablo Morales, is a childhood hero of mine, an Olympic Gold Medalist in 1992 with an amazing comeback story after not making the team in ’88. It was thrill for me personally to have him here, we really appreciate them coming down.”
As usual it was the 200 yard medley relay kicking things off and it was the Eagle team of Kira Toussaint (Amstelveen, Netherlands/Keizer Karel College), Armitage (Bushey, United Kingdom/Queens School Bushey), Yee Wong (Hong Kong, China/Dlocesan Girls’ School) and Kristin Julien (San Fernand, Trinidad and Tobago/St. Stephen’s College)who would come away with the victory with a time of 1:44.40. The Green and Blue would make it a one-two finish when the team of Sandra Wilk (Lexington, Ky./Paul Laurence Dunbar HS), Evita Leter (Paramaribo, Suriname/Doral Academy), Svensson (Uppsala, Sweden/Celsiusskolan) and Becky Derogatis (Fort Lauderdale, Fla./Indian River/Cardinal Gibbons HS) finished second, touching in at 1:44.90.
Lani Cabrera (Barbados/St. Ursala’s Secondary School) picked up the first of her two distance wins in the 1000 yard freestyle with a time of 10:21.13. She would also go on to win the 500 yard free with a time of 5:00.19. Finishing second in the 1000 free was her teammateNina Schiffer (Dortmund, Germany/SG Dortmund) who touched in with a time of 10:33.38.
Armitage came away with a victory in the 200 yard free with a time of 1:53.43 while teammateDevin Robins (London, United Kingdom/The Grey Coat Hospital) finished third in 1:56.05. Armitage would later go on to win the 100 yard breaststroke with a final time of 1:04.81 and as the only Eagle to finish in the top three.
Svensson picked up her first solo victory in the 50 yard free with a scorching time of 23.06 and Yee followed that up in the 200 yard IM with a first place time of 2:07.82 with teammateKaren Vilorio (Tegucigalpa, Honduras/Elvel School) finishing third in 2:11.26. Svensson second individual win came in the 100 yard free when she touched in at 50.57. Toussaint rolled to a convincing victory in the 100 yard backstroke with a time of 56.76 which was nearly two full seconds faster than second place.
In the final event of the morning, it was another Eagle relay picking up a win in the 200 yard freestyle relay. This time it was the combination of Julien, Sara Hamilton (Stonehaven, Scotland/Mackie Academy), Derogatis and Toussaint coming way with the top spot with a time of 1:35.94.