Melbourne, Fla. – The Florida Tech swimming teams were back in the Panther Aquatic Center pool on Friday evening with a 14-event, relays-only meet against Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), one of the top swimming programs in NAIA.
 
The 19^th ranked Panther men defeated the Bees (ranked #5 in NAIA), 126-88 and the women were victorious as well, defeating SCAD (ranked #9 in NAIA), 136-58.
 
Tech took the opening event, winning the Mixed 200 Medley relay thanks to the group of  Daniel Aizenberg, Rae Ann Dressel, Jay Jay Fonnotto and Debora Xavier posting a time of 1:41.33.
 
The team of Miranda Olhasso, Torie Whitbeck and Xavier won the Women's 300 Fly relay with a time of 3:05.49.
 
The men were victorious in the 300 Fly relay as well through the quartet of Akos Hajagos, Fonnotto and Nathan Scott recording a 2:35.82 finish.
 
The squad of Dressel, Sophia Sichtnik and Casey Holder were dominant in the Women's 300 Breast, with their time of 3:30.16 being over seven and a half seconds ahead of the closest competition.
 
The group of Matthew Heaphy, Matthew Smith and Connor Orth made a clean sweep in the 300 Breast as they won the men's race with a time of 3:00.33 that was over four seconds ahead of second place.
 
The team of Christina Ramirez, Whitbeck and Olhasso won the Women's 300 Back relay thanks to a 3:06.60 time.
 
It was a clean sweep in the 400 Free relay for the Crimson and Gray as the quartet of Maja Malarz, Holder, Whitbeck and Alex Knodel won the women's event a time of 4:21.71 that was over 10 seconds ahead of second place. The squad of Hajagos, Zachary Reese, Daniel Aizenberg and Josh McLean won the men's event with a 3:43.95 finish. 

COACH'S CORNER:
Head Coach David Dent on the teams' first competition since the Panther Invite last month: "We wanted to just to get them racing one more time before the break. And just we did some fun events tonight to cap off finals week because we know how stressful finals are for them. So, this was just a way to have some fun and still have that competitive drive with us throughout the night. We had some pretty good swims, I'd say, based off how they were swimming this week because of the stress of finals we didn't know what we were going to see but we're content with what we did see."
 
On the team's practices and performance over the past month: "We went back, we took some things that we wanted to touch on from Panther that we missed in training, and we started to focus on those a little bit after Panther. So we've been toying with those a little bit, given us some ideas to tack on into January and carry that through for our training plans from January through conference [championships]. We're excited about it, we think that the ideas that we've tested out in the last couple of weeks are going to pay off for us pretty well."
 
On the confidence in the team heading to the season's stretch drive: "They're hungry, they're wanting to do more, they're wanting to keep accomplishing more and more and more. Every meet we go to, they're wanting to accomplish stuff."
 
Up Next:
The Panthers will return to action on Saturday January 27^th at the Panther Aquatic Center for Senior Day against Lynn, which is scheduled to begin at 12:00 P.M.
 
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