March 17, 2011

By Wes Todd
Assistant Media Relations Director

AUSTIN, Texas – South Carolina wrapped up its first day of preliminaries at the NCAA Women’s Swimming & Diving Championships on Thursday as all three Gamecock student-athletes competed in one event each at the Texas Swimming Center.

Freshmen Rachael Schaffer and Amanda Rutqvist both swam the 200-yard individual medley in Thursday’s afternoon preliminaries. Schaffer finished 28th in her first NCAA Championships swim with a 1:59.30, while Rutqvist was 51st with 2:02.10 in what is easily the third of her three events at this year’s NCAA meet.

In 1-meter diving preliminaries later in the day, senior Taryn Zack finished 18th with a score of 274.65, missing a spot in the consolation final by less than five points.

All three will be back in action on Friday. Rutqvist will swim in the 100 breaststroke preliminaries, and Schaffer is slated to compete in her best event, the 400 individual medley. Zack will have one more shot to earn her fourth career All-America honor with the 3-meter diving competition. Swimming prelims begin at noon ET, with diving prelims set for a 2:30 p.m. start. Live swimming results are available through NCAA.com, and diving results are available via divemeets.com.