WINTER PARK â€" Winning all but one of the 11 races held, getting individual wins from eight different swimmers including NCAA “B†qualifiers Jesus Marin and Thomas Nguyen, top-ranked Florida Southern kept its perfect record in dual meets intact with a 154-50 victory over Rollins on Friday.
Marin, a junior from Cumana, Venezuela, and Nguyen, a senior from Snellville, Georgia, each hit NCAA “B†times on Friday for the first time this year, and junior Allan Gutierrez (San Pedro Sula, Honduras) did so for the third time. Marin and Nguyen made theirs in the 200-yard freestyle and the 200-yard backstroke respectively, while Gutierrez also had a “B†time in the 200-freestyle. Gutierrez had already posted a provisional time in the 100-butterfly on two previous occasions.
The Moccasins, who are now 4-0 in dual meets this season, nearly got two more “B†times from freshman Franco Lupoli (Weston, Fla.) and senior Robbie Swan (Snellville, Ga.), but Lupoli fell 0.96 seconds short in the 1,000-yard freestyle, and Swan was just 0.03 seconds off the mark in the 100-yard freestyle.
The 1,000 was the first individual race of the day, and it’s where Lupoli picked up his first collegiate win by beating out sophomore teammate Juan Tolosa (Guipuzcoa, Spain) by a little under 10 seconds. Lupoli swam the race in 9:36.75 after finishing second to Tolosa in the 500-freestyle three times earlier this season.
Gutierrez, Marin and Nguyen then went 1-2-3 in the 200-freestyle, with Gutierrez winning in a time of 1:41.33. It was the first of six individual races Friday in which the Moccasins claimed the top three spots, and the Mocs also did that in both relay races. Gutierrez and Marin were involved in each of those as well, as was freshman Diego Gimenez (Burgos, Spain), who gave the Mocs their third individual win by capturing the 50-yard freestyle in 21.44 seconds. It was another of the 1-2-3 finishes by Florida Southern, with sophomore Edson Lima (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) and redshirt freshman Alec Wathen (Sunrise, Fla.) completing the 50-yard sweep.
Junior Dylan Lake (Los Alamos, N.M.) made it 4-for-4 in favor of the Moccasins with a win in the 200-yard IM, and sophomore Raul Garrastazu made it five straight wins for the Mocs by taking the 200-yard butterfly. Lake was second in that race and sophomore Dustin Nguyen (Snellville, Ga.) was third.
Swan then came within 0.03 seconds of his “B†qualifying time in the 100-freestyle, but won the race by 0.15 seconds over Gutierrez, with Lima coming in third. The domination continued with Thomas Nguyen, Gimenez and freshman Evan Coleman (Yarmouth, Maine) taking first, second and third in the 200-backstroke, before Marin, Garrastazu and Lupoli did the same in the 500-yard freestyle.
Rollins finally broke the Florida Southern string of victories by finishing first and second in the 200-yard breaststroke, the last individual race of the meet.
Florida Southern’s next meet will be the Nova Southeastern Invitational in Davie, December 14-17.
