The University of Texas at Austin Athletics
Women's Swimming and Diving heads to NCAA Championships
03.15.2006 | Women's Swimming and Diving
AUSTIN, Texas -- Texas, ranked No. 8 in the country by Collegeswimming.com, travels to Athens, Ga., to compete at the 2006 NCAA Championships. The meet runs from Thursday, March 16 through Saturday, March 18.
Preliminaries will begin at 11 a.m., with finals slated for 7 p.m. daily. Thirteen swimmers and four divers will represent UT at the three-day meet at Georgia's Gabrielsen Natatorium.
Seniors Amanda Larence (Nashville, Tenn.), Jaclyn Faulkner (New Orleans, La.), Kristy Siminski (Portage, Ind.) and Elizabeth Wycliffe (Kingston, Ontario) will be making their last trip to the NCAA Championships.
Junior Stephanie Anderson (Scottsdale, Ariz.), junior Leah Avilla (Livermore, Calif.), junior Connie Brown (Andover, Mass.), junior Elaine Ferritto (Columbus, Ohio), junior Katie Robinson (Dillsboro, Ind.), junior Elizabeth Tinnon (Bowling Green, Ky.), freshman Hee-Jin Chang (Seoul, Korea), freshman Lina Petersson (Karlskrona, Sweden) and freshman Alexi Spann (Austin, Texas) also will be representing UT.
Also, for the first time since 2003, Texas will send four divers to the NCAA Championships. Texas claimed four out of six available spots at the 2006 Zone D meet at the Mizzou Aquatics Center in Columbia, Mo. on March 10-12.
For junior transfer Mary Yarrison (Springfield, Va.), it will be her second trip to the championships after claiming All-America Honorable Mention honors on the platform and 3-meter dives as a freshman on the Arizona team. Sophomore Jessica Livingston (Houston, Texas) and freshmen Kathryn Kelly (Longwood, Fla.) and Kara-Jayne Salamone (Cooper City, Fla.) will be making their first trips to the NCAAs.
Texas also qualified five relay teams: the 200-yard medley relay, the 400-yard medley relay, the 200-yard freestyle relay, the 400-yard freestyle relay and the 800-yard freestyle relay. The 200-yard medley relay time of 1:38.48 swam on Feb. 24 at the Big 12 Championships by Brown, Tinnon, Robinson and Faukner is currently the second fastest time in the country entering the NCAA Championships.
Texas has a proud tradition at the NCAA Championships as it has won seven NCAA titles and has finished runner-up on three other occasions (1989, 1992, and 1994) since its first year as a NCAA school in 1983. Since Jill Sterkel took over the Texas program in 1992-93, the Longhorns have finished in the top 10 at the NCAA Championships on 11 occasions, including a runner-up finish in 1994.
