GENEVA, OHIO â€" With three of the country’s best long-distance swimmers competing in the first event of the meet, Florida Southern knew it would have a chance to make some early noise at the NCAA Division II Swimming and Diving Championships. The Moccasins delivered too with third and sixth-place finishes in the 1,000-yard freestyle from Juan Tolosa and Franco Lupoli, and more points from Raul Garrastazu, which helped put FSC in second place at the end of day one.
In addition to the impressive showing from its distance swimmers, Florida Southern also got a fourth-place finish from senior Robbie Swan (Snellville, Ga.) in the 50-yard freestyle, an eighth-place finish from its 200-yard medley relay team that also featured Swan, and a win from junior Luis Rojas (Caracas, Venezuela) in the consolation finals of the 200-yard IM. They helped the Moccasins score 83 points on the day, with only Drury (MO) ahead of them. The Panthers scored 144½ points on Wednesday as the two teams began the 4-day meet in the same positions where they finished at last year’s national finals. Cal-San Diego was third with 69 points, and Wayne State (MI) and Queens (NC) were tied for fourth with 57.
Swimming in the final heat of the 1,000-freestyle, Tolosa shattered his own school record with a time of 9:09.71, putting him 2.71 seconds behind the winner, Victor Polyakov of West Chester (PA), and 1.05 seconds behind second-place Skoneczny Borowicz of Lindenwood (MO). Tolosa in turn was almost three seconds ahead of his closest competitor in fourth place. The sophomore from Guipuzcoa, Spain bettered his eighth-place finish at last year’s national finals, and broke his school record in the 1,000 by a little less than four seconds. He’d established that mark at this year’s SSC Championships.
Lupoli, a freshman from Weston, Florida, was swimming in the same heat and ended up sixth in 9:16.01. Sophomore Raul Garrastazu (Dorado, P.R.), who was in an earlier heat, finished 16th with a time of 9:24.87. That gave the Moccasins 30 points, putting them only six behind West Chester at that point, and three ahead of Drury. Florida southern was the only school with two swimmers in the top-six of the 1,000, but West Chester had three of the top-10.
Though Rojas fell 0.19 seconds short of reaching the finals in the 200-IM, he did win the consolation finals of that event in 1:47.71, his best time of the season. He was joined in the consolation race by junior Spencer Rowe (Chattanooga, Tenn.), who clocked in at 1:51.73. With no West Chester swimmers reaching the finals or consolation finals, those points moved the Moccasins ahead of the Rams, but Drury also moved up and assumed the lead for the rest of the night.
Drury added to its total by finishing first and second in the 50-yard freestyle, but Swan got some of those points back for Florida Southern by not only placing fourth, but setting a new school record as well. Competing in the 50-yard finals for the first time, the senior had a time of 20.05 seconds, breaking Miguel Ferreira’s former record by one one-hundredth of a second. Ferreira had set that standard at last year’s national championships. Swan is now the Moccasin record holder in both the 50 and 100. The Moccasins also got points from junior Allan Gutierrez (San Pedro Sula, Honduras), who was third in the consolation finals of the 50-freestyle.
In the final race of the night, Florida Southern’s 200-medley relay team of senior Thomas Nguyen (Snellville, Ga.), senior Zach Edwards (Jacksonville, Fla.), sophomore Edson Lima (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), and Swan finished eighth with a time of 1:29.13. Wayne State won the race with a meet-record time of 1:26.02, more than one second ahead of the time the Warriors’ 200-medley team posted in 2013.
Day two begins with prelims Thursday morning at 10:30, with the finals in five swimming events and one diving event scheduled for 6 p.m.
