FORT MYERS, Fla. – In their final meet of the regular season, the FGCU swimming & diving team (2-2, 2-0 CCSA) won 13 of the day's 15 events and earned a 171-104 victory over UNF (0-6, 0-3 CCSA). With the win, which came on Saturday afternoon at the FGCU Aquatics Center, the Eagles closed out their regular-season slate with a perfect, 2-0 mark against conference opponents.
Senior
Petra Halmai (Dombovar, Hungary/Lanczos Kornel Secondari Grammar School), who was honored at the beginning of the day as part of the team's senior day celebration, led the Eagles with a pair of individual wins in the 200 Fly and the 400 IM. Freshmen
Emma Hixenbaugh (Louisville, Ky./Ballard HS) and
Karen Arngeirsdottir (Reykjanesbaer, Iceland/Fjolbrautaskoli Sudurnesja) also tallied a pair of victories. Hixenbaugh took home both the 100- and 200-yard backstroke events, while Arngeirsdottir touched the wall first in both Breast events (100- and 200-yard).
"Congratulations to the team for a great win today," head coach
Dave Rollins said. "To see so many first-time event wins was really exciting. It was a great afternoon to celebrate Petra and now we get to refocus our attention on conference. We are in a great spot heading into the CCSA Championship and it's shaping up to be a really exciting meet."
The Eagles opened up the action with a victory in the 200 Medley Relay, as the quartet of freshman
Alicja Ulicka (Rybno, Poland/Liceum Ogolnoksztalcace IM Wislawy Szymborskiej), freshman
Emily Merton (Jacksonville, Fla./Robert E. Lee HS), junior
Alexis Durlacher (Jacksonville, Fla./Florida Virtual School/Florida State) and freshman
Zuzanna Rabiniak (Radom, Poland/X Liceum Ogolnoksztalcace Mistrzostwa Sportowego W Lublinie) posted a 1:45.49. All in all, the team was perfect in relay events, thanks to Hixenbaugh, junior
Meghan Schienvar (Holmdel, N.J./Holmdel HS), junior
Wiktoria Czarnecka (Lublin, Poland/Liceum NR 10 W Lublinie) and junior
Joely Merriman (Shawnee, Kan./Shawnee Mission North/Arizona State) who later closed things out with a win in the 200 Free Relay.
Following the opening triumph, the Green & Blue went on to capture seven-straight events. Sophomore
Hannah VanDress (Cape Coral, Fla./Bishop Verot) kicked off the streak with her performance in the 1650 Free, winning by nearly eight seconds. Juniors
Taylor Williams (St. Petersburg, Fla./Osceola Fundamental HS) and
Ashley Kaminski (Virginia Beach, Va./Landstown High School) continued the momentum, adding back-to-back wins in the 200 IM and 200 Free. Sophomore
Kaja Reinhardt (Herdecke, Germany/Helene-Lange-Gymnasium Dortmund) then completed the spurt by taking home the 50 Free after Hixenbaugh, Arngeirsdottir and Halmai notched their first wins of the day.
The freshmen duo of Hixenbaugh and Arngeirsdottir then added their second victories of the meet, touching the wall first in both the 200 Back and the 200 Breast. Their classmate,
Rebecca Winn (Warwick, United Kingdom/The Kingsley School), added to FGCU's lead in the following event, the 500 Free, which she took home with a time of 5:17.62. The victory was the Eagles' second-to-last of the individual events, as Halmai went on to close things out with her swim in the 400 IM.
FGCU will now have its sights set on the upcoming CCSA Championship, which will be held Feb. 15-17 at the Liberty Natatorium in Lynchburg. The competition will have the Eagles' 10th conference title on the line. Details regarding the meet, such as streaming and live results, will be released as they are finalized by the league office.
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HEAD COACH DAVE ROLLINS
Head coach Dave Rollins is only the second coach in program history. He was hired Sept. 1, 2016 and owns a 33-22-1 (.609) dual meet record, which includes an 12-2 (.857) mark against CCSA opponents, in his fourth season. Rollins guided FGCU to back-to-back CCSA titles (2017, 2018), as well as the program's fourth-straight title in 2018, marking the ninth championship in 10 years. In addition, he has been awarded CCSA Coach of the Year in two of his seasons at the helm. Previously, Rollins was the associate head men's swimming coach at The Ohio State University. Rollins brings over a decade of coaching experience to The Nest, which includes helping to develop Olympians, NCAA Champions and All-Americans, along with multiple conference champions. A native of Brockton, Mass., he was a standout collegiate swimmer in his own right and was inducted into the University of Arizona's Hall of Fame in 2017, as a nine-time NCAA All-American, national champion, school record holder and team captain.
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ABOUT FGCU
FGCU teams have combined to win an incredible 82 conference regular season and tournament titles in just 13 seasons at the Division I level. Additionally, in just nine seasons of D-I postseason eligibility, the Eagles have had a combined 38 teams or individuals compete in NCAA championships. Seven FGCU programs have earned a top-25 national ranking in their respective sport – including women's basketball (No. 24, 2019-20) and both men's soccer (2018, 2019) and women's soccer (2018) as three of the most recent. In 2016-17, the Green and Blue posted a department-best sixth-place finish in the DI-AAA Learfield Directors' Cup and top-100 showing nationally, ahead of several Power-5 and FBS institutions. In 2018-19, the Eagles had an ASUN and state of Florida best seven teams earn the NCAA's Public Recognition Award for their Academic Progress Rate (APR) in their sport and have had the highest percentage of teams so honored from these two groups over each of the past three years. FGCU also collectively earned a record 3.46 GPA in the classroom in the spring 2020 semester and has outperformed the general University undergraduate population for 22 consecutive semesters. The 2019 Fall and 2020 Spring semesters each saw another milestone reached as all 15 programs achieved a 3.0-or-higher team GPA. The Eagles also served an all-time high 7,200 volunteer hours in 2017 – being recognized as one of two runners-up for the inaugural NACDA Community Service Award presented by the Fiesta Bowl.
--FGCUATHLETICS.COM--
