@CanesSwimDive Delivers Another Exciting Season
CORAL GABLES, Fla. – The Miami Hurricanes swimming & diving team continued its ascent towards the top of the Atlantic Coast Conference with an impressive season in 2015-16.
Paced by seven dual meet wins – the most in five seasons by Miami – and highlighted by a sparkling postseason run, the Hurricanes look poised to continue their rise next year.
Whether it was freshman David Dinsmore qualifying the United States for a second spot in the 2016 Olympics with a dominant performance at the FINA World Cup in Rio De Janeiro, seven school records falling at the 2016 ACC Swimming & Diving Championships or sophomore Briadam Herrera picking up two more ACC gold medals, the Hurricanes made their mark both internationally and domestically this past year.
With a qualifying time in the 100-yard butterfly, junior Angela Algee became the first Hurricane swimmer to earn an NCAA Championships under head coach Andy Kershaw and Algee has shown a steady improvement under his tutelage. Her time in her premier event, the 100-yard butterfly, has improved, by year, from 55.2 seconds (2014) to 53.6 (2015), and 52.5 this past season. Algee, who has also shown stellar growth in the long-course pool, will be competing at the U.S. Olympic Trials. The Hurricanes have many other swimmers knocking on the door to the NCAA Championships; this year the team had eight different swimmers garner 13 NCAA consideration times, compared to five swimmers earning seven consideration times in 2015 and two swimmers earning two times in 2014.
Head diving coach Randy Ableman continued his dominant run at the helm of the program by sending five divers to the NCAA Swimming & Diving Championships: both active men’s divers (Herrera and Tanner Wilfong), as well as women’s divers Carolyn Chaney, Wally Layland and Kara McCormack.
Herrera was named an All-American with a second-place and a fifth-place finish at NCAAs, while Layland was named Most Outstanding Diver at the 2016 ACC Swimming & Diving Championships, and earned All-America status with her eleventh-place finish at the NCAA Championships.
Junior Christina Leander (100 backstroke, 200 backstroke) was among those Hurricanes to set school records during the 2015-16 season. Leander took the 100 backstroke record down twice during the year. She first broke the record at the Ohio State Invitational in November, and then lowered the record at the 2016 ACC Championships. She would go on to set the 200 backstroke record the next night in Greensboro, N.C., while the Hurricanes team also broke four out of the five school relay records at ACC Championships.
There is even more reason for optimism: nearly all of the Hurricanes’ top point-getters, save for captains Kara McCormack and My Fridell and senior Alejandra Gonzalez, return in 2016-17.
The Hurricanes returning nucleus, which includes all of the divers except McCormack and Wilfong, and talented swimmers like rising seniors Algee, Leander, Cameron Davis and Julia Schippert, rising junior Julie Suarez and rising sophomores Ianire Casarin and Roxanne Yu, will be joined by a five-member signing class that should help to continue Miami’s upward trend. The Hurricanes opened their completely renovated Whitten Aquatic Center with $1.2 million in upgrades in mid-January, and will now have an entire season to utilize the improved facility and equipment.
International swimmers Chantal Noe (Ruesselheim, Germany) and Ilianna Oikonomou (Athens, Greece), as well as Great Britain Olympic diver Alicia Blagg, will all compete for the Hurricanes in next fall, in what promises to be another exciting season in Coral Gables.
