Melbourne, Fla. – The Florida Tech men's swimming team wrapped up the eighth annual Panther Invite on Sunday at the Panther Aquatic Center with prelims in the morning and finals in the evening.
Tech finished the meet in fourth place with 717 points. Indian River State made it a clean sweep by taking the top spot with a 1,190.5 total, followed by Florida Southern's 881.5 and St. Thomas in third with 762.5 points. The Crimson and Gray finished ahead of Rollins (661.5) and Barry (158).
During the morning session,
Akos Hajagos set a new school record in the 200 Fly with a time of 1:48.47. The previous high mark of 1:48.74 had been set by Adi Davidov at the 2017 Sunshine State Conference Championships.
Hajagos' record would last less than eight hour as he would break it again during the A Final by putting up a time of 1:47.64, which earned him fourth place.
Luke Altman finished second in the 100 Free A Final with his time of 44.47.
Connor Orth grabbed sixth in the 200 Breast A Final thanks to his 2:02.75 time.
Jack Pillsbury was tops in the C Final with a time of 2:07.22 that was 0.06s ahead of the next competitor.
Zachary Reese took home seventh in the 200 Back A Final through a 1:50.03 finish.
Jay Jay Fonnotto placed eighth in the 200 Fly A Final with a time of 1:49.86.
The 1650 Free Final would see a sixth place finish for
Brayden Hohman (16:12.34), followed by
Zachary Kopel in seventh (16:20.29),
Gavin Lanka in 12
th (16:48.15), 13
th for
Collin Meadows (16:50.41) and 16
th for
Camden Bell (17:51.24).
Tech's top finishing relay team in the 400 Free relay was the group of Altmann,
Daniel Aizenberg,
Matteo Caruso and
Max Martino, who earned fourth place thanks to a time of 3:00.89.
Coaches' Corner
Head Coach David Dent on the team's overall performance this weekend: "We loaded up the fall with a lot of meets just to see how they would respond to the back-to-back-to-back and, and we wanted to challenge them to try to get better every week. We would make it a focus in practice too, think about what you did in your swims this previous week, and what we need to focus on going forward to make those swims better. And we did that here, but we also are gonna go back to the drawing board on some things that we need to clean up, so that hopefully come Conference [championships] we're all swimming as best we possibly can and cleaned up all those little details that we might have missed here."
On the mood of the team following the season's signature event: "They're hungry for more. We're beating and competing with teams who usually beat us year in and year out at the Conference meet. To come out here and not even let them faze us and do what we did was really fun."
On Akos Hajagos' instant impact: "This was what we were hoping we would get out of him and the fact that we are getting out of him is really exciting for the future of our program because we we've already got a few commits going forward in the future that are in the same boat that Akos was. They're coming in with times that could win meet in and meet out and the fact that he's coming in and doing it just makes us excited for that future."
UP NEXT:
The Panther Invite will return to action on Friday December 15
th at the Panther Aquatic Complex with a dual meet against SCAD-Savannah.
For the latest news, updates, and information on the Florida Tech men's swimming team, visit FloridaTechSports.com. Fans can also stay up to date on the latest Panthers news by following Florida Tech Athletics on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.
