Men’s Swimming & Diving Podium to Start SEC Championships

Credit to Rachel Perreault | Director, Athletics Communications – 12thman.com

AUBURN – The Texas A&M men’s swimming & diving team got SEC Championships started with a 1-2 finish on the 1-meter as Victor Povzner defended his title and Rhett Hensley claimed silver Monday night at the James E. Martin Aquatic Center.

After posting the second-highest total in prelims, Povzner used a season-best score of 403.05 to secure his second gold medal on the 1-meter and the third medal of his career. Hensley snuck into the final, holding on to finish eighth in the prelims, and used a career-best score of 381.60 to move up a spot on the podium from the 2023 championships and bring home a silver medal.

Takuto Endo also advanced to the final after placing sixth in prelims. He came on strong late in the evening session to take fourth with a score of 362.90.

Allen Bottego earned a spot in the consolation final after placing 12th in prelims with a score of 289.75. He went on to take second in the B final and place 10th overall on day one with a score of 345.60.

After making history a season ago on the 1-meter at SEC Championships with the most points in a single event in program history, the Aggies once again started the meet a big way, racking up 103 points in just the first event of the meet.

The meet continues Tuesday with the men’s diving team event and a pair of relays. Action will be streamed on SEC Network+. Live results can be found on the Meet Mobile app and results for the diving portion can be found here.

POST MEET QUOTES
Head coach Jay Holmes on the Aggies’ performance …
“Our divers have gotten us started really well again. It’s just what they do. An awesome job again by Victor [Povzner] for the win and seeing Takuto [Endo] be steady the whole day was great to see. The drama of the day was seeing Rhett [Hensley] battle like he did. He just barely got out of prelims and basically snuck into finals on his last prelim dive. Then getting second tonight on a great list of dives was exciting for our whole team. Coaches [Jay] Lerew and [Jeff] Bro did a great job preparing them.

“It’s only one event so we have a long week to go. But we are pumped to see it get started like this.”

Complete Schedule:
Tuesday, Feb. 20
Prelims – 11 a.m. – Diving team event
Finals – 5 p.m. – 200 medley relay, 800 free relay

Wednesday, Feb. 21
Prelims – 9:30 a.m.
Diving Prelims – 12 p.m.
Finals – 5:30 p.m. – 200 free relay, 500 free, 200 IM, 50 free, 3-meter

Thursday, Feb. 22
Prelims – 9:30 a.m.
Diving Prelims – 12 p.m.
Finals – 5:30 p.m. – 400 IM, 100 fly, 200 free

Friday, Feb. 23
Prelims – 9:30 a.m.
Diving Prelims – 11:30 a.m.
Finals – 5:30 p.m. – 200 fly, 100 back, 100 breast, platform, 400 medley relay

Saturday, Feb. 24
Prelims – 9:30 a.m.
Diving Prelims – 11:30 a.m.
Finals – 5:30 p.m. – 1650 free, 200 back, 100 free, 200 breast, 400 free relay

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