Tennessee Women Dominate Coral Springs Relay Invite

By Sara Baisey

CORAL SPRINGS, Fla., Dec. 19. THE University of Tennessee women's swimming team capped off its winter training trip to the Coral Springs Aquatic Center in Florida with competition in the Coral Springs Relay Invitational. The Lady Vols were in action against teams from Calvin College, the University of Delaware and Davidson College.

The teams competed in 10 events most of which are not a part of the normal collegiate swimming program, including butterfly, backstroke and breaststroke relays. Tennessee was victorious in all 10 events.

"For a meet at the end of a tough week of rigorous training, I was pleased with the overall performance," Lady Vol head coach Dan Colella said. "We had the opportunity to have some swimmers compete in off-events and we were pleasantly surprised with the results. The biggest news out of this meet was senior Bianca Jones returning to action for the first time since last year's SEC meet. She had a great day, including a split of 57.30 in the backstroke relay, and we are excited to have her returning to competition."

The Orange and White opened the meet with victories in the 300-yard butterfly (2:57.64), backstroke (2:54.84) and breaststroke (3:24.36) relays. Following the stroke relays, the attention focused on the 800y and 500y freestyle events, which UT won in times of 7:56.32 and 4:48.24, respectively.

In the 400y medley relay, the Big Orange won in a time of 4:02.64 before picking up a victory in the 200y freestyle relay in 1:37.76. A long distance event was next on the slate as the Tennessee took the 1,500-yard freestyle relay title in 15:31.50.

The 400y IM relay and the 400y free relay were the last events of the afternoon and Tennessee continued its winning ways in times of 4:06.13 and 3:39.04, respectively.

Following a holiday break and then a return to classes, the Lady Vols (2-1 overall, 2-1 SEC) will get back to competition on Jan. 12 against No. 3 Auburn and No. 16 Northwestern in Auburn, Ala.

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