Alabama
Women's NCAA Championships
Alabama Women’s Swimming and Diving Finishes Program-Best Fourth at NCAA Championships
3/19/2022 11:02:00 PM | Swimming & Diving
The Crimson Tide posted six top-six finishes on the final day of competition at the women’s NCAA Championships, boosting UA into fourth place in the final team race with 288 points, both program bests
ATLANTA – The Alabama women's swimming and diving team went into the final event of the 2022 NCAA Championships in a tight race for the fourth and final spot on the podium in the team competition.
Luckily for the Crimson Tide, that last race was the 400 freestyle relay, where it has enjoyed quite a bit of success recently, including Saturday night, when Diana Petkova, Morgan Scott, Kalia Antoniou and Cora Dupre combined to swim a school-record 3:09.07 to finish third and clinch the Crimson Tide's fourth-place team finish, the best in school history.
In her first year as head coach, Margo Geer and her women's team used six top-six finishes to move and stay ahead of NC State during the championships' final session and ascended the podium and picked up the program's first NCAA trophy (which goes to the top-four team finishers each year).
In addition to making the podium, Alabama posted the top national finish by a Southeastern Conference school, finishing six places ahead of the next SEC program and more than doubling its point total.
Kensey McMahon opened the final night of competition with a huge swim in the 1,650 freestyle, dropping four second off her seed time and finishing third with a season-best time of 15:47.60. In the next race, Rhyan White dropped a second from her prelims time in the 200 backstroke to move up to third place with a 1:49.36, making a podium filled with her USA Olympic teammates.
Alabama had three swimmers score in the 100 freestyle, led by Scott's silver-medal finish in a school-record time of 46.78, becoming the first UA woman under 47 seconds, while Dupre used a career-best time of her own, going 47.08, to take fourth place. Antoniou took seventh in the B final of the 100 freestyle and 15th overall with a 47.93 to add to UA's point total.
Avery Wiseman took sixth in the championship final of the 200 breaststroke with a time of 2:06.57 in the Tide's final individual event.
In addition to posting its best finish, Alabama bettered its previous high-point total at NCAAs, set last season, by 14 points. Alabama's previous best team finish was fifth in 1983 and in 2021.
Alabama Head Coach Margo Geer Said
"What an incredible finish to an amazing week. We are so proud of the way our ladies stayed focused on what we had to do to be successful. There is no doubt that this was a total-team effort and I can't say enough about how our ladies finished things off tonight when things were really tight. This was an extremely loaded field and our success came from staying locked in to getting better every session and getting the most out of every swim. All that hard work and dedication paid off with Alabama making it to the podium for the first time in school history."
Up Next
- With the women's championships in the books, the Crimson Tide sends a contingent to Atlanta for the next week's NCAA Men's Swimming and Diving Championships
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