Men's swim team in second, women in third at SEC meet

LEXINGTON, Ky. — The eighth-ranked University of Florida men's swim team maintained second place after Friday's events at the Southeastern Conference Championship meet at the Lancaster Aquatic Center on the University of Kentucky campus.

The Gator men won in the 400 individual medley and 200 free, while the No. 6 Florida women's squad moved up to third place, led by a title in the 100 breast.

Auburn leads in men's and women's team standings.

"Today was another good day in the conference meet for Florida," said Florida coach Greg Troy. "We swam a lot of younger team members, and had several good performances in both the preliminaries and the finals."

Sophomore Bradley Ally won his first SEC title, winning the 400 IM in 3:45.82. It marked the fastest time this season in the event by a collegiate swimmer.

"Bradley Ally has had a great season," Troy said. "He's on top of his game and is racing really well. He's been solid, to say the least."

Senior Ashley Carusone and junior Leah Retrum finished second and third, respectively, in the 400 IM for the UF women. Florida followed its dominating performances in the 400 IM with an equally impressive finish in the 200 free. Freshman Shaune Fraser won the event with a time of 1:35.05, which stands as the seventh-best time in Gator history. Junior Grant Johnson touched the wall less than two-tenths of a second later (1:35.23) to take second place.

"Shaune has been swimming a lot of conference meets for a freshman, but to win a conference title against a really good field like he did tonight with as much confidence as he had shows his talent," Troy said. "He's on his way to concluding a really outstanding freshman season."

After posting the top time in the women's 100 breast during the morning prelims, junior Caroline Burckle returned for her evening swim with an even more impressive performance to win the first Florida women's title of the conference championships. Burckle claim Florida's third-straight SEC title in the 100 breast, and her gold-medal winning time of 1:01.27 ranks as the second-best at Florida.

"We had to use Caroline in the breaststroke at the last minute because we needed to fill in a few holes," Troy said. "She's been so good in the event throughout the season that we thought she could win it tonight. We took a bit of a chance, but it paid off very well."

In the men's 100 backstroke, sophomore Lucas Salatta finished second, narrowly out-touched by Auburn's Scott Goodrich. On the women's side of the 100 back, freshman Gemma Spofforth made her first-ever appearance on the SEC Championships medal stand, placing third with a time of 54.14

WOMEN'S TENNIS

The fourth-ranked Gators showed few signs of rust after a 12-day break in a convincing 6-1 victory over South Alabama at the Ring Tennis Complex.

The win, which improved the Gators' overall record to 4-0 this season, was UF's 44th consecutive regular season home victory and the team's 31st straight overall home win.

After earning the doubles point and sweeping all three positions, the Gators jumped out early on the singles courts and earned the dual match win in just over one hour. Capturing singles victories on Friday included Csilla Borsanyi, Nina Suvak, Whitney Benik, Megan Alexander and Lolita Frangulyan.

"I'm fairly pleased with today's match," UF coach Roland Thornqvist said. "Our doubles continued to be pretty good and aside from the setback at No. 1 singles, we did pretty well. On a couple of the courts, we didn't handle our mistakes well early, but once we cleaned them up, I thought we played much better."

SOFTBALL

Florida opened its season at the Kajikawa Classic in Tempe, Ariz. with a 4-0 win over Northwestern State and a 2-1 win over Oregon.

Senior Stacey Stevens pitched the 12th shutout of her career against Northwestern State. In the earlier game, UF sophomore pitcher Stacey Nelson struck out a career-high 10 batters in beating Oregon. It marked the first time an individual Gator pitcher had struck out 10 or more batters in a game since Stevens struck out 11 against Ole Miss on March 26, 2005.