NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Vanderbilt swimming will open the 2023-24 season Friday at Centennial Sportsplex when reigning SEC champion Florida visits for a noon meet.
“Since this is the first meet it gives us a chance to begin the season with a clean slate,” head coach Jeremy Organ said. “We have to compete. This is the team that sets the bar in the SEC that we are going up against, but that also gives us an opportunity to race with no fear. We can go and race and enjoy ourselves in this process. We are going to make mistakes because some of us haven’t raced collegiately since March, so this is about setting the bar for the season which we will want to raise at each meet that follows.”
The Commodores are coming off as season that saw six individuals advance to compete at the CSCAA National Invitational Championship, the most for the program since the 2018 campaign. Both Faith Knelson and Kailia Utley met the NCAA B Standard—the former advanced to multiple finals at the SEC Championships as well—with the quartet of Gabriela Pierobon Mays, Maddie Smith, Ellie Taliaferro and Mercedes Traba also racing at the final meet of the season.
Knelson and Traba broke multiple school records in 2022-23, with Taliaferro and Utley setting new school marks also. In addition, the Dores return nine other student-athletes who enter the season ranked among the top 10 on the school’s all-time performer list in at least one event: Gray Almasi, Megan Ciezczak, Karsyn Cook, Meredith DiPasquale, Pierobon Mays, Smith, Alina Stout, Clare Vetkoetter and Hannah Weissman.
“I think our training has been better this early in the season,” Organ said. “We’re going to swim this meet and then we have a pretty good break until our next one, so we’re really going to be able to set that strong base that we can base competition the rest of the year on. Everything looks really good right now.”
This will mark just the second appearance for the Gators in Nashville, with the only other match-up between the two programs at Vandy taking place in 2015. Not only did Florida win the SEC title a year ago, it would go on to record a top-10 finish at the NCAA Championships.
