clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

Gamecock Olympic Roundup: Swim and Dive dominate, Men’s Tennis sweeps

Track and Field fell short in Fayetteville while Womens Tennis splits at ITA Kickoff

University of South Carolina AMR

While Gamecock basketball swept out this week, the other non-rev sports did their best to emulate basketball’s success in their respective competitions.

If you missed this piece last week, we’re going to do our best here at GABA to give a weekly report on the non-rev sports at South Carolina. If you’re a true Gamecock fan, then you’re a fan of all sports at South Carolina — not just the ones that generate money via big television contracts.

Right now equestrian, tennis, swimming and track are all in season, some of which are off to great starts this season and are worthy of recognition. Specifically, both tennis teams which comes at a great time when people are actually talking about the sport.

Here’s how things shook out this week for all those aforementioned sports:

Tennis continues strong start

The Gamecock men’s tennis team picked up where they left off last week with a sweep over the weekend, beating Quinnipac 7-0 and Dartmouth 6-1 in Hanover, N.H. The only loss on the singles side came via an upset of South Carolina’s top-100 player Thomas Mayronne, who lost to Dartmouth’s David Horneffer.

The other top-100 players Gabriel Friedrich, Harrison O’Keefe and Yancy Dennis all took home wins in both matches, with Freidrich and Dennis each coming back in their singles matches after dropping the first set 4-6.

The Gamecock men (3-0) will look to keep things rolling this week when they travel to the ATL to face Georgia State (4-2) this Sunday.

Women’s tennis splits in Lubbock

The ITA Kickoff is one of the most prestigious college tennis tournaments of the season, and the Gamecock ladies took one of the toughest regional draws in the entire tournament.

The No. 16 Gamecocks dropped a tough opening match to No. 21 Arizona State in the first round, with South Carolina’s highest ranked player Mia Horvit defeated ASU’s second highest ranked player in Kassidy Jump. However Arizona State took four of the three sets and move on the the finals, leaving USC to thump UC-Santa Barbara 4-1 in the consolation match.

On Friday the ladies (4-1) will head upstate to take on Clemson (2-2) Friday and even further up north to Charlottesville to face Virginia (1-2) Sunday.

Swim and Dive wins SC Invite

After a rough start to their season, the Gamecock swimming and diving squads won the SC Invite, a meet they hosted in Columbia this past weekend.

UNCW, East Carolina, Wingate and Queens were all defeated as the Gamecocks won 22 total events over the weekend. Emma Barksdale shone the brightest of all the swimmers, winning the 400m individual medley, 100 m freestyle, 400m medley relay and broke the school record in the 1000m freestyle race.

Up this weekend is a big one for the swim and dive squads, as they’ll travel to UNC to participate in the Chapel Hill College Invite.

Track falls short in Arkansas

The Razorback Invitational is no walk in the park by college track and field standards go, considering a number of the top programs in the country were in attendance. As a team, South Carolina didn’t finish higher than ninth on either day.

Regardless, South Carolina had seven top-five finishers over the weekend. The highest of which were by Josh Awotunde who placed second in the shot put, Isaiah Moore finishing third in the 60m hurdle finals and the women’s 4x400m relay finished second.

The teams will look to rebound this weekend with a trip to New York City at the Amory Invitational.

Equestrian wins exhibition opener

The Gamecock equestrian team swept their exhibitions this weekend over Ohio State and Converse. Neither meet counted towards South Carolina’s official record, so No. 8 USC stays 3-3 and will face Georgia in SEC action this weekend.