Traveling to Georgia for the UGA Fall Invitational, the Michigan men’s swimming and diving team managed to earn 503 points on Sunday, finishing sixth among seven teams and placing seven swimmers in the top-eight in the invitational finals.
Michigan opened up Friday with 12 NCAA provisional ‘B’ times and two NCAA Diving scores. The team added to their ‘B’ times with 17 more on Saturday and finished the invitational on Sunday with an additional 11, bringing their weekend total to 40.
The team missed some key pieces during the weekend, with juniors Paul Powers, PJ Ransford, Evan White, sophomore Mokhtar Al-Yamani, and freshman Felix Auböck all sitting out the competition to participate in the FINA World Swimming Championships that begin Tuesday in Windsor, Ontario.
Leading the way for the Wolverines were a quintet of freshmen in Charlie Swanson, Miles Smachlo, Jacob Montague, Steven Anderson, and Jake Herremans, all five of whom qualified for their events’ finals on Saturday and Sunday.
Swanson, a Big Ten Freshman of the Week, followed up a 400-yard IM championship in the USA College Challenge with a fifth-place finish (3:46.06) in the same event on Saturday and a 13th-place finish in the 200-yard breaststroke, clocking a time of 1:58.88.
Ranked fourth in the Big Ten in both the 100-yard and 200-yard breaststroke, Montague took seventh in the 100 on Saturday with a 53.51 finish and outpaced Swanson in the 200 with a time of 1:57.30, placing him eighth in the final on Sunday.
Anderson came away with a 10th-place finish in the three-meter springboard final on Saturday with a score of 295.10 and earned fifth in the platform final on Sunday (291.95).
Herremans played an active role the entire weekend, receiving an NCAA Zone Diving qualifying score on Friday with a 309.75 mark in the one-meter springboard final on Friday, earning him sixth place. He followed the strong start with a score of 281.70 in the three-meter springboard final on Saturday and a tally of 262.35 in the platform final on Sunday, placing 12th and eighth, respectively.
Smachlo finished fourth in the 100-yard butterfly on Saturday (46.88) and 10th in the finals for the 200-yard butterfly with a 1:45.09 mark on Sunday.
The Wolverines will now enjoy a month-long break before competing again at the Orange Bowl Classic in Key Largo, Fla., on Jan. 3.
And with the missing members of its team returning for that meet, Michigan will be in better shape going forward.