After early setback, women's swimming and diving finishes fourth at ACC Championships

The resolve of the Terrapin women's swimming and diving team was tested quickly at the ACC Championships last week, perhaps sooner than coach Sean Schimmel had anticipated.

After two events Wednesday, the team sat in ninth place after the disqualification of the Terps' 800 freestyle relay team due to an early start by Victoria Cassidy. Schimmel, who disagreed with the false-start call, realized his squad was at a crossroads.

"In regards to how not only Victoria reacted, but the entire team, they had a choice to make on Wednesday night and coming into Thursday morning," Schimmel said. "To either be with that pool and not even flinch to what happened or let it get the best of them."

Afterward, there was little debate over which they had picked. The Terps responded with a host of stellar performances at the Georgia Tech Aquatic Center, climbing over the next three days from ninth to fourth at the championship meet.

"I was really proud of my team because they walked in there and they didn't even flinch and they continued to have hands-down the best meet out of any team in the ACC," Schimmel said.

Again, a pair of standout swimmers paced the Terps throughout their late-meet surge.

Senior Annie Fittin posted a school-record 22.11 in the 50 free prelim before recording the same time to take the final. She and Megan Lafferty, who raced to a second-place finish in the same event (22.35), both touched the wall before Virginia's Lauren Perdue, the 2010 champion in the 50 free, a result the normally reserved Schimmel called "icing on the cake."

Fittin also placed second in the 200 free (48.79, a school record) and 100 back (53.25) and was a part of four relay teams that broke school records.

"Certainly impressed with Annie. She's one of our team captains, and the performances that she put in were certainly a byproduct of how she goes about her training, how she goes about her daily routines in life," Schimmel said. "Day in, day out, being a Division I athlete — she stepped herself up for that type of success."

Lafferty, a sophomore, set an ACC Championship record with a time of 52.39 in the 100 fly. Like Fittin, she was a part of the four relays and also took third in the 100 free.

"Megan in her own right really stepped up and made some huge progress from last year and again it had a lot to do with the way she goes about setting up her training and setting herself up for success for those types of results," Schimmel said. "They just don't happen."

It's the relay disqualification, however, that likely will remain fixed in Schimmel's mind for the foreseeable future. Third-place Florida State finished with 417 points and likely would have switched spots with the Terps (397 points) had the quartet not been disqualified. The Terps were seeded fifth in the final, and the 28 points from an equivalent finish would have been enough to leapfrog the Seminoles.

"That false start wasn't Cassidy's fault," said Schimmel, who added that the relay exchange is "not an exact science" for either swimmers or officials. "There's two people when you're doing a relay exchange, and it's a combination of both them. And it was just — those things happen. ... That's what happened, and it was extremely unfortunate."

castello@umdbk.com