The No. 14 Virginia men's swimming and diving team is off to a strong 4-2 start this season, falling by very narrow margins to the fifth and sixth best teams in the country and dominating the rest of its competition.
And the Cavaliers have done it without their two best swimmers.
Seniors Ryan Hurley and Pat Mellors are red-shirting this college season to pursue their Olympic dreams.
"They earned the right to do this through their successes," Virginia coach Mark Bernardino said. "They earned the right to pursue this goal through their incredible successes at the highest levels and to ask them to pursue it with anything less than 100 percent of their emotional and physical energies would not have been fair to them."
Ranked seventh and 20th in the world respectively, Mellors and Hurley are preparing for the U.S. Olympic Trials in July and the chance to make the 2008 Olympic Team that will compete in Beijing.
Mellors, the 2007 ACC Swimmer of the Year, ranks third in the United States in the 400 IM behind world record holders Michael Phelps and Ryan Lochte. Since the U.S. Olympic team only takes the top two swimmers for each event, Mellors must improve on the record-setting time of 4:12.94 that he posted at the World University Games in Thailand last August if he is to qualify.
Hurley currently ranks fourth in the United States in the 200 breaststroke (2:13.24) and will compete against world record holder and Olympic medalist Brendan Hanson in the trials.
"You don't get many opportunities like this," Bernardino said. "Both are behind U.S.A. athletes who are the world record holders in their events so they have a really, really daunting task in front of them. We had to make the difficult decision to redshirt both of them because they would not have been able to pursue this with full vigor if the college season were to take precedence over the international opportunity."
Although Hurley and Mellors are not competing at the collegiate level this season, they have hardly removed themselves from the team.
"They are training with us and they are on deck at meets," junior Lee Robertson said. "It is tough at meets because we don't have two superstars in the pool, so this had made lots of people step up, especially our first-year class. Without those one or two for-sure wins, we have to swim well as a team and depend on one another."
As the Cavalier men come together to fill in the gaps in the lineup, Mellors and Hurley, according to Bernardino, are with their teammates every single day. Thus, this young team -- comprised mostly of freshmen and sophomores -- still benefits from their leadership.
"Mellors and Hurley are emotionally, physically and mentally present and highly invested in the success of the 2007-2008 squad," Bernardino said. "They are our two most accomplished athletes internationally. They are both tremendously experienced at the highest levels of the NCAA competition and they are the team leaders."
The Cavaliers certainly look forward to having both men back next season. Bernardino even jokes that Virginia's recruiting class next year is probably the best in the country, as it will include two Olympic trial veterans.
"We have told our recruits for next year that they are going to walk into a program that has two of the best swimmers in the world," Bernardino said. "Even though it might only be for a year, those swimmers are still going to have that time to train and learn from two marvelous athletes"
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