CLEARWATER – Sophomore Jacinda Whittenburg turned in perhaps the best performance of her young career Saturday with one individual win, one runner-up finish, and a new school record, and Florida Southern won both relay races too as the Moccasins remained in second place on the second day of the Tampa Spartan Invitational.
Florida Southern won four of the seven races held Saturday, with both the 200-medley and 800-freestyle relay teams on that list. Whittenburg captured the 400-IM and was second in the 100-breaststroke. She set her new school record in the 400-IM, and also anchored one of their two 800-freestyle teams too. The Spartans managed to out-score the Mocs on the night, but the Mocs still out-scored the Spartans in four of seven events, and had NCAA provisional qualifying times in every one of them.
In the 200-medley relay that started the night, it was seniors Lauren Reynolds and Kelsey Gouge, and freshmen Krystal Karas and Rebeka Dics that gave FSC the win in a "B" time of 1:46.34. Later, in the final race of the night, Gouge and Dics swam two legs of the 800-freestyle relay, and along with senior Alli Crenshaw and sophomore Peyton Breault, gave the Mocs another win and another NCAA "B" time of 7:33.11.
Whittenburg led a 1-2-3 finish for the Moccasins in the 400-IM by setting a new school mark with her time of 4:28.31. She had already broken it once on Saturday during the prelims, and the previous record holder, senior Heather Burns, was runner-up in the finals at 4:30.05. Senior Morgan Burns placed third, and all of them hit NCAA "B" times in the process.
Florida Southern's fourth win on Saturday night came from Reynolds who took the 100-backstroke in 57.59 seconds. Including the 200-medley relay, that gave her a hand in two wins overall for the Mocs, along with Gouge and Dics.
In addition to the runner-up finish by Heather Burns in the 400-IM, the Moccasins got two more from Breault from in 200-freestyle and Whittenburg in the 100-breaststroke. Breault was one of three Moccasins with NCAA "B" times in that event, with Crenshaw and Dics the other two. Whittenburg and freshman Haley DeGrace had "B" times in the 100-breaststroke.
Karas put her name on the list of potential NCAA qualifiers when she posted a "B" time in the 100-butterfly. Karas placed third in that event in 56.91 seconds.
At the end of the night, Tampa still led the meet unofficially by 74 points over Florida Southern with none of the other three teams (Lynn, Rollins, and Lenoir-Rhyne) close to them. The Moccasins had five event wins, with Lynn recording four and Tampa three.
The Tampa Spartan Invitational concludes Sunday with six more events.
