Feb. 21, 2011

COLUMBIA, S.C. – South Carolina freshman swimmer Amanda Rutqvist has been named the AgSouth Athlete of the Week.

Rutqvist, a native of Gothenburg, Sweden, became South Carolina’s first-ever women’s swimmer to win an SEC Championship as she captured the league title in the 200-yard breaststroke on Saturday at the SEC Swimming Championships in Gainesville, Fla. Her time of 2:08.56 set not only a school record, but also a new Southeastern Conference record, surpassing the previous mark of 2:08.85 by Alabama’s Anna Poleska that had stood since 2001. Her mark was also an NCAA automatic qualifying time, clinching a berth in the 2011 NCAA Women’s Swimming & Diving Championships, which run March 17-19 in Austin, Texas.

The freshman set a second school record earlier in the week as she swam a 1:00.20 in the 100-yard breaststroke preliminaries, shattering her own mark from earlier in the year by more than a second and a half and posting an NCAA `B’ cut time. She finished fourth in the 100 breast final, setting up her record swim in the 200-yard event the next night. Rutqvist also swam a 2:01.72 in the 200-yard individual medley to post the third-best time in school history, earning another `B’ cut. In addition, she swam the breaststroke leg of the 400 medley relay that broke another school record with a time of 3:40.29, another NCAA `B’ cut time.