With the Pentathlon and the Garnet and Gold meet already under our belts, the Florida State Swimming and Diving team's season has officially kicked off!  These two meets really encourage the team and allow us to really get pumped up for the upcoming season.  The pentathlon is first, which is where everyone on the team swims the 50 freestyle, 100 breastroke, 100 backstroke, 100 butterfly and 200 freestyle.  It is a really enjoyable, team meet that brings everyone together as there are some people who can only do the 50 freestyle for example, but they are really working so hard for the team in every other event.  It is great to see everyone working hard not only for themselves but for each other.  The Garnet and Gold meet is where the team is divided into two teams and we race the dual meet schedule.  It creates a really great atmosphere between the two teams and creates an even greater atmosphere at the end when we all come back together for the Florida State cheer!

With a successful summer of Seminole swimming drawing to a close, the swim team of '11-'12 are getting ready to make their way back to Tallahassee!  The summer came to an end with some great results from Nationals and sectional meets.  Many Olympic Trial cuts have been taken, even by some incoming freshmen.  We have created a fantastic building block for the college season that is fast approaching which, I think, fills everyone with excitement of how successful this season could be!

With a new assistant coach, new captains, and new freshmen/transfers, the first few weeks of school are definitely going to be an exciting time of the year!  Most people get into town at least the weekend before school starts, and this is when the upper classman take trips to the dorms to meet and greet the freshman.  It is awesome getting to know each freshman individually and getting to know their personality.

Around the second/third week of school the girls usually take a night away for a team bonding weekend.   This usually happens at a cabin in Georgia where we eat great food from the Barbie, play some games and spend some quality time together as a girl's team.  It is a great way to introduce the freshmen to the team and for them to get to know everyone.  It is a great and fun time to try and think of new, original cheers and incorporate new team traditions!

After a few weeks of training as a team and getting to know everyone, the excitement of being back with the team and getting ready for some great competing this year will definitely kick in!  The season starts off early this year and with meets five weekends in a row, we have a tough but exciting meet schedule ahead!  We start off our meets with a tri-meet, away, against FGCU and UM on October 1st.  Out first home dual meet is against LSU on October 14th so be sure to attend the meet at the Morcom Aquatic center to watch the Seminoles take some titles!

Bringing home four bronze medals with us (Stephanie Sarandos 200Back, Lisi Rowland 1meter and 3 meter, Katrina Young Platform), two school records (Tori Richmond 200IM, Me in the 500Free), many top eight finishers and countless top 16 finishes, what seemed a tough meet for some of the girls last week seemed to turn out pretty good!  Although ACC's didn't go the way that some people had expected last week in Atlanta, our team grew closer together and stronger as one, as we had to come together for each other more than we had ever done before. 

The ACC seems to be developing and becoming one of the stronger conferences in the country; therefore, there is no room for mistakes to be made at this meet but I think our team has learned a lot from the swims that we put in, both great and one's that could be improved, including myself.

Florida State ended up third overall, a place we are very proud of.  We were able to overcome competition from Miami and Maryland because at certain times during the meet, they were ahead of us in the total rankings.  We really came together though, the girl's team was really able to pull together and stay strong during the deciding final session on Saturday, where we earned valuable points that enabled us to get the third place we deserved. 

The divers also really shone at ACC's.  The girls were able to bring home a medal from every board (Lisi Rowland and Katrina Young), and the boys had two people on the podium for two out of the three boards(Landon Marzullo, Jordan Horsley and Mike Neubacher).  The men are going into ACC's this week with 156 points already which is great as other teams such as Virginia, for example, don't have many divers.  We have such a talented group of divers that bring so much energy and happiness to our team, their passion for diving is always clear to us.

The girls that competed in ACC's this week are all going to be glued to our computers this week watching the Men's ACC Championships in Atlanta and the Senior Championships in Orlando.  We are excited to see some fast SEMINOLE swimming and great results! We also have four girls going back to Atlanta to compete in a last chance meet on Sunday (Stephanie Sarandos, Tiffany Oliver, Tori Richmond and myself).  We are all going to be on the bubble with qualifying for NCAA's; therefore, are going to repeat certain swims to try and go a few tenths/seconds quicker!  I have the upmost confidence that we can put in great swims while back at the Georgia Tech pool!  GO NOLES!!  J

Hello Seminole Fans!

As ACC's draw closer and closer, we are starting to feel AWESOME in the pool and have more energy outside of the pool.  During taper time the work intensity and mileage in the pool decreases, so personally I never know where to direct the new found energy I have suddenly gained!  I usually end up being really hyper at practice!  I think, speaking from the whole team's perspective, there isn't one person who doesn't enjoy taper time!  Depending on what group you are in (sprint, middle distance, Stroke/IM or distance) the amount of work that decreases differently, for example, the sprint group decreases their work in the water a whole lot more than the distance group does!  With myself being in the distance group, we get one morning off during taper, which feels like heaven! Sleeping in, instead of waking up at 5.30 a.m. is just great! That in itself gives us so much extra energy.  You wouldn't believe the difference a 7 a.m. practice can make to you instead of 6 a.m.! It's just great and we are all getting really excited for the big meet!

A team tradition leading up to a major meet, is secret psyche.  This is where each girl picks a name out of a hat of a girl on the team.  A week prior to the meet, we decorate the girl's locker with encouraging, creative posters and include small gifts that usually include things such as power bars that can be used at the meet!  It's something that we all look forward too, it's really great to see your locker decorated with pretty posters, but my favorite part is when you tell the person the day we leave for the meet who their mysterious secret psyche has been!  It gets exciting trying to guess who your secret psyche is!

Another team tradition we have for ACC's is to make a CD prior to the meet consisting of a song that each girl and coach has chosen.  These songs tend to be great pump up songs that we listen to during the meet.  For the past two years a fellow junior, Lisi Rowland and I, have made the CD for the girls and we're in the process of making them this year!  Because there are 30 girls on the team and five coaches, there are always two CDs given to each girl.  The first song on the first CD is always the FSU Warchant which is played as we get out of the van and walking into the pool so that everyone knows FSU is present and ready to rock!  I really enjoy making these for the girls. We decorate the CDs to make them look pretty so that they are a good keepsake; it's just a fun thing to do for each girl on the team! 

We will travel to Atlanta, Georgia by bus, Tuesday morning.  Once we arrive, will we get in the pool for a quick dip, then head to the hotel to relax and get ready for the 4x200 freestyle relay and the 4x50 IM relay Wednesday afternoon. These are always two great events for us.  The girls that swim these relays always step up and do a great job, which encourages everyone for the next three days of individual events.  Everyone is also really excited to see their families at the meet.  My mother and grandparents are taking a trip from across the pond in England to come to the meet.  It's really great to see your parents up in the stands cheering for you at a meet that means so much to you.  With parents coming from all over the USA from Wisconsin to Miami, it will be great for us all to catch up with parents we may not have seen since last ACC's!

We are three days out from leaving to go to ACCs.  The excitement is building, some nerves are forming, but we can't wait to actually get to the meet!  We hope that all our fans follow our results from the meet through Seminoles.com!

Hello Seminole fans!! My name is Charlotte Broadbent and I'm a junior here at Florida State.  I'm majoring in Writing, Editing and Media with a minor in Business and I'm honored to be a part of the Florida State Swimming and Diving team.

 We finished our dual meet season two weekends ago racing Alabama at Alabama where the ladies took home the win.  It was a great final meet to get pumped up, swim fast, and show that we are ready to take some titles home with us at ACCs.  The atmosphere the team as a whole created at this meet was great.  It really showed how we can come together at a meet and what a great team we are.  We were able to stand behind the blocks before our races, and cheer for the rest of the Florida State girls in that heat too.  It's such an amazing feeling to know that the team, especially the girls, is fully behind you in and out of the pool.  It is also such an encouraging feeling when we look into the crowds, even at an away meet and see Florida State parents.  The support we have gained this season has been phenomenal.  At every home meet the stands have been jam packed with family, friends and fans.  It really makes everything so much better to have so many supporters, we appreciate you so much, thank you!

Speaking for the team as a whole, I think one of our favorite dual meets has to be the Florida vs. Florida State meet.  After I think more ten years of taking home second place to the Florida swimmers at the dual meets, the day was long, long awaited.  Both the ladies and men's team knew that we were in amazing shape, and we got in the pool and swam our hearts out.  Both teams took home the win, and for the ladies, beating the NCAA defending champions was an incredible feeling.  We made history that day, but we have continued to grow as a team since then!  One of the great things this year has been to watch the freshman that we have brought in, grow.  They have really stepped up, making our team stronger both in and out of the pool.  They are all extremely vocal and so fun to be around which is great as ACCs approach!

The excitement of the ACC Championships being less than three weeks away is hitting the team! Over the past few days the atmosphere has changed a little at the pool as the ACC team has been announced.  It's always a nervous time for everyone, as unfortunately the whole team cannot travel to conference anymore like it did my freshman year.  Everyone is getting really excited though and is putting their final touches to their work that has already been done and taper is finally in sight (for the sprinters it has already started)!!

The ladies team had our annual pasta dinner and ACC poster making last weekend which was so much fun.  It's a time when we can all get together outside of the pool, eat a good pasta dinner and then enjoy time making posters that we put around the pool at ACC's.  All of the classes get together and make their own individual class posters and then we are in the process of making a team poster too.  It's an encouraging feeling to see so many Florida State posters around the venue of ACC's, none of the other teams posters compare to ours!

I am a junior here at Florida State and in January we just added another girl to our really small class (Tori Richmond)! The junior class before only had three swimmers and one diver, so it's really great to get another great girl to add to our little group.  That being said, because we are such a small class, we have a tight bond which is always nice and this week we had a dinner together which was great to catch up as a class and to make Tori really feel at home!

Thank you to all our fans that have supported our dual meet season, next stop is the ACC Championship!