2021 SEC MALE SWIMMING AND DIVING CHAMPIONSHIP
- Tuesday, February 23 – Friday, February 26, 2021
- Columbia, MO – University of Missouri
- Preliminaries / Finals: 10h / 17h Tue, 10h / 18h Wednesday to Friday (Central Standard Time)
- Defending champion: Florida (8x) (results)
- Live Scores
- Live Video – SEC Network
- Central Championship
The South Carolina men’s swimming team will be short of players this week in Columbia as they begin the second part of the SEC’s 2021 Men’s Swimming and Diving Championship.
In a statement posted on Instagram and attributed to head coach McGee Moody, the program announced that they will be somewhat “short-handed” in this week’s SEC Championship. When asked who would be absent, a school spokesman said they had no more information to share, leaving a cloud of mystery surrounding the absences until results began to appear.
The full statement says:
“Our full team will not be competing this week at the SEC Men’s Swimming Championships in Columbia, Missouri, under the COVID-19 protocols. Our men and women, like all college athletes, intentionally changed their lifestyle and sacrificed much of what is normal in college to survive the season. I saw them fight, fight and come back stronger through adversity all year. They have been flexible and resilient. For these reasons, I am proud beyond words.
“I am heartbroken by the men who worked all year to survive the conference meeting and have now been told that they will not be able to travel or compete with their teammates. That said, our main concern is the health of these athletes. With the ups and downs that the past year has brought to our world, we are proud to still be able to represent the most important university in our state in everything we do. For you forever! “
South Carolina did not remove any of the first 20 seeds from the initial psychological leaves before the final version of the previous night was published. They have only 36 individual registrations for the meeting.
The main seeds of the team are juniors Rafael Davila, the 24th seed at 1650 free (15: 50.49) junior Luke Massey, the 25th seed in the 100 breaststroke (54.38), second year Jordan Yip, the 27th seed in the 200 breaststroke (2: 00.67), and AJ Ross, the 29th seed in the 50 free ones (20.25).
Gamecocks ranked 9th out of 10 in last year’s SEC Championship match, and they don’t have their top 4 scorers from that match. 50-point scorer Anton Down-Jenkins is now in North Carolina, 32-point scorer Itay Goldfaden was senior, as was 24-point scorer Kevin Liu, and the team’s best-known sprinter Lewis Burras, has not competed for South Carolina since October and is not on the psychology sheets.
This means that the best scorer on the team is Phil Costin, who scored 22 points last season through 8th place in the 200 free.
The University of South Carolina has registered 1,073 cases of COVID-19 in total among its students since January 1, 2021. The most recent 3-day reporting period, February 16-18, saw 31 students positive.