Area colleges: VU swim team eyes top prizes in SEC meet

For coach Jeremy Organ and the members of Vanderbilt’s women’s swim team the meaning of Sweet 16 is different from the most well known ones.

It has nothing to do with a debut. The program, the newest in VU’s athletics department, did that four years ago. Likewise, it’s not about being one of the top 16 teams in the country, as is the case with most sports that have a national playoff.

This goal for these particular Commodores is just to place among the top 16 individuals in any event at this week’s Southeastern Conference championships, which commence Wednesday at Athens, Ga.

“Our goal is for everybody to swim their best and hope a window opens for somebody to get up there and score some points,” Organ said.

Points are awarded to the top 16 in each event. Vanderbilt is guaranteed not to be shutout because it will participate in the relays, which will have a maximum of 10 entries. Individual points are much more difficult to achieve.

Although in its fourth year of competition, the program still is very in its infancy with a long way to go before it is fully funded. Currently Organ awards just five scholarships, which is well below the limit of 14.

The best bets to place are sophomore Laura Dillon in the breaststroke events and freshman Erika Deardorf in the long distance freestyle swims. Dillon has won her last three races, some against SEC competition, and Deardorf has set a pair of school records.

Whatever they and their teammates do in this meet, though, will be considered building blocks for what Organ hopes eventually will be a much more competitive program in the years to come.

“In today’s world everything is instant gratification,” Organ said. “… With us, it’s definitely a delayed gratification. All the training we do and all that work is about trying to be better in the future.”

Bruins on the rise

Steady scoring has helped propel Belmont’s men’s basketball team back to the top of the Atlantic Sun Conference standings.

The Bruins won their fifth straight game on Saturday, 70-57 at USC Upstate. In all five victories they scored between 70 and 75 points, including exactly 70 in each of the last two.

With four games remaining, Belmont is tied with Campbell and Jacksonville for first place at 11-5. Three of those contests are against the five A-Sun teams with losing conference records.

Briefly

• Talk about performing when it mattered most: Tennessee State freshman Robert Covington scored a career-high 24 points in a 109-102 double overtime victory Monday against Tennessee Tech. Covington was scoreless in the first half, five in the second half and 19 total in the two five-minute overtime periods.

• Cumberland’s Brandon Springer failed to score in double figures for just the third time this season when he was held to nine Monday in a 76-50 loss at Union. It was still enough to get him to 1,000 for his career. The Hunters Lane graduate and Columbia State transfer has 1,001 points in fewer than two seasons.