Conference Preview: SEC dominance extends to the pool

When Texas A&M made the move to the SEC, all the talk centered around how it would affect the football team.

Well, football did okay this year, right?

I mean, having grown up outside the state (and country) where football is king, I am no expert. But I am pretty sure that a Heisman trophy and a Cotton Bowl win are good things.

Yet, as SEC talk swirled around College Station and beyond, I was excited about what his conference move would do for the swim team.

Obviously, I am a little bit biased. But during my career in Aggieland, as we crept our way up the ranks, I remember being a junior and myself and a few of my fellow classmates approaching Steve Bultman to ask him why we didn’t have a tougher dual meet schedule. We wanted to race the likes of Auburn, Georgia and Florida before we got to the NCAA meet; we believed we were just as good as them and wanted a chance to prove it.

Bultman’s response was that these schools didn’t have time in their schedules to swim us because of their already saturated conference schedule. Fast forward five years and the women are getting exactly what they need to make them better: A tougher conference.

Even though Missouri had made (and continues to make) some serious strides in their program, the Big 12 Conference meet was simply a glorified dual meet on the women’s side: Us versus them (them being Texas).

We knew that they were our only real threat to the conference title, and so our mantra was this: Win the close races. And I’m not just talking about first versus second. It is the thirds-over-fourths, eighth-over-ninths that will win the meet at the end of the day. Win the close races. Against Texas.

So if the Big 12 Conference was a dual meet, the SEC Championships will be the National Championships. Twelve women’s teams, five in the top 20, four of those in the top 10, and a plethora of not just Olympians, but Olympic finalists, medalists … even gold medalists. It is going to be a completely different meet than these women have faced in the past, but it’s exactly what they need.

Right now they have the talent, the work ethic and the coaching to make a run for a national title. This was the missing piece of the puzzle. 2008 Olympic relay Bronze Medalist (and Texas A&M’s first ever US Olympian in swimming) Christine Marshall and I used to have a motto during our time as Aggies: Race the best, beat the best, be the best.

Ergo, you can’t be the best until you have the opportunity to race the best. Now these girls have that opportunity before they arrive at the NCAA meet, finally giving them equal footing with the more dynasty college swim programs like Florida and Auburn.

Of the fourteen teams in the SEC, twelve have women’s swim teams. Ranked in the top ten are Auburn (3), Tennessee (4), Georgia (6), Florida (8), and Texas A&M (9). Auburn, Georgia and Florida all won NCAA titles during my time at A&M (2005-2010) and, although Auburn had a bit of a blip after head coach Richard Quick passed away in 2009, these schools are notorious for being great swimming programs.

Among the ranked teams is Arkansas (18), and old Big 12 buddy Missouri just recently dropped from the rankings. The Aggies will also face LSU — whom they beat handily every year in an annual dual meet (Aggies were 179-107 this year over the Tigers) — Alabama, Kentucky, South Carolina and Vanderbilt.

The only SEC schools that you won’t see in the pool next week are Mississppi and Mississppi State.

So who are the favorites to win the coveted SEC title? I would say any of the top five could take it, but there is a lot more to it than who has the best swimmers. A conference meet has more factors that will come into play than NCAA’s, the biggest one being how rested the swimmers are.

Bultman won’t fully taper the girls who already have NCAA cuts (that is, bring their training down a notch so that they are fresher for their races). This includes Olympians Cammille Adams and Breeja Larson. A lot of the girls on the SEC team will not be resting for SEC’s; they will likely do a drop taper a few days out in order to save their full rest for the NCAA meet.

But don’t fret just yet: If Bultman’s program teaches anything. it’s toughness, and they’ll still be able to step up and race even if they are tired. That is a guarantee.

The most “tired” team will be Florida. Watch a Grand Prix meet in the summer, and if you are surprised to see a world record holder in the “C” final, they are probably from Florida. Ryan Lochte and Gemma Spofforth are prime examples of racing dead tired throughout the season.

Even though Florida has some serious talent, including Olympic medalist Elizabeth Beisel and Olympic finalist and Canadian record holder Sinead Russell, it’s a safe bet that they will be significantly better at NCAAs than at Conference.

Auburn always seems to swim fast at Conference. I remember being worried about Auburn after the ridiculous times they would post during their conference meet, and the Aggies’ only loss this year came to the Auburn Tigers.

And for all you Larson fans: Auburn is the home to 2012 Olympic finalist in the 200 breaststroke, Micah Lawrence (who actually came on a recruiting trip to Texas A&M) ... and Larson is the NCAA record holder. Showdown, anyone?

Tennessee came as a surprise to me: The Vols have always been pretty good, but I had to check when I read that they were ranked fourth in the nation. They only have one loss this season — to Florida — and actually upset Georgia at the end of January. The team is led by senior Kelsey Floyd, undefeated in both butterfly events this season, and sophomore Molly Hanis, undefeated in both breaststroke events. They are definitely going to make a run for the Conference Title.

The hardest team for the Ags to beat, in my opinion, is going to be Georgia. Georgia is extremely deep, especially in freestyle (which is the best place to be deep). The Bulldogs are led by two-time US Olympian Allison Schmitt, who won five medals in London — including a gold in the 200-meter freestyle.

Their roster also features Megan Romano, who broke the NCAA record in the 200 freestyle last year, and junior Shannon Vreeland, who was a member of the gold-medal winning US 4x200-meter freestyle relay in London last summer. Enough said.

I’m not going to go through each team and each race and tell you what to expect, because that is not my style. Of course, I will recap the sessions and give predictions, but as a former swimmer, my expertise doesn’t lie in stats that can be easily found on other sites throughout the meet. It’s what goes on behind the scenes, in the Aggie locker room.

I will try to recap the women’s meet in detail, but will be less active on the men’s side. Not that I have anything against the men’s team, but my expertise lies within my experience on the Aggie women’s team. The programs are separate, with different coaches, practices, and meet preparation strategies. It wouldn’t be fair for me to apply my experiences to a team I swam beside but not with for five years.

That being said, I hope you enjoy what I have to say during the meet, that it sparks some healthy discussion, and gets Aggies and Aggie fans more involved with the swim program. Stay tuned folks, because we are well on our way to becoming a dynasty program in our own right!