Gaines, UK Women's Swimming & Diving Team Hoping to Make History
Many times, college coaches speak about having their teams peaking at the right time. In other words, those coaches want their teams performing their best when postseason play arrives.
The Kentucky women’s swimming and diving team is doing exactly that. The Cats have steadily climbed the ladder of success all year long. Along the way, the Cats have ranked as high as number three in the national poll. Most recently, Kentucky won the SEC Women’s Swimming & Diving Championship for the first time in school history.
Now, the Cats head to Greensboro, North Carolina, for the NCAA Swimming & Diving Championships beginning on Wednesday, hoping to ride the momentum from that SEC title.
“Our team and coaching staff are really excited for this week, especially since the meet was canceled last season due to COVID-19,” UK head coach Lars Jorgensen said. “This is a great opportunity for our team to finish off the season, which has already been historical, on a great note, and we’re looking forward to competing against the best and the fastest in the nation. The team has sacrificed a lot and has been incredibly resilient all season to have this moment, so we’re excited to see what we can do.”
Kentucky’s best-ever finish in the NCAA Women’s Swimming & Diving Championship was a 12th-place showing in 2005-06. The Cats were 14th in both 2016-17 and 2017-18. Junior Riley Gaines knows that this is the year that UK can eclipse that mark.
“Last year, we probably would have been a top 10 team, which is something that swimming has never done for Kentucky,” Gaines said. “But we talked (Sunday) morning with the captains and the NCAA girls and we decided that we think we can be a top five team. We were ranked third earlier in the year. We’ve kind of made it our goal to be a top five team and so that’s kind of the bar and the expectation. And I think it’s totally attainable. I think if everyone does their job and our relays do a good job, that won’t be a problem for us.”
Gaines gives Jorgensen a lot of credit for taking the team to new levels.
“He’s awesome, he’s the best. He brings so much energy,” Gaines said. “He says things that make you want to believe in yourself and do it for your team. He’s hard on us but in a good way to where it makes us want to get better. He has this way of coaching that brings the best out of everyone.”
One of the shifts that Jorgensen had the team make this year was to focus more on sprints this season, a move that has paid off, according to Gaines.
“We had a huge shift this year into training more sprint stuff, which isn’t generally something Kentucky has done in the past,” Gaines said. “We started doing more sprint stuff and it helped me tremendously. And not just me but all of my other teammates who do freestyle.”
Gaines has been a beneficiary of that shift. She has already broken the UK record for the 100 freestyle four times this season.
“I think when I broke it the first time, in November, was kind of the start of all of that training,” Gaines said. “Since then, we’ve kept on with it and I’ve kept improving. Every time I’ve gotten a chance to swim it again, I break (the record) again because of our training. It’s been super helpful working on those kind of things.”
The other big shift for the Kentucky squad this season has been taking on more of a team mindset, something that Gaines knows had paid off.
“A big thing we’ve done this year, rather than saying we’re doing it for ourselves, it’s do it for your teammates. Do it for the person swimming before you or after you,” Gaines said. “At SEC’s, that really, really showed. Every final you were watching, a Kentucky person was winning the heat and getting their hand on the wall first. We just had that energy and that ball rolling and it just kept rolling.”
In addition to the momentum that the team will carry into the national meet, Gaines said that the Cats are motivated to do well for the program’s alumni.
“One of our other captains, Bailey Bonnett, made a video before we competed as SEC’s of different alumni saying what it would mean to them if we won and it was huge for our girls,” Gaines said. “It just really put into perspective that this is bigger than just this team right now. This would be history, which we accomplished at SEC’s but we want to continue that and let it show at a national level. It’s really huge to do it for them as well as us and the coaches and all of the alumni.”
The Cats are hoping to carry that motivation, and the momentum gained by winning the SEC championship, into this week’s national meet. It could all add up to a historic weekend for the UK women’s swimming team.
