University of Florida swimmer vanessa pearl is medically retired. After missing the fall semester, Pearl told SwimSwam on Wednesday that she made the decision to end her college swimming career in December.
She plans to stay in school to complete her education.
This would have been Pearl’s 4th year of college swimming. Pearl was a three-time NCAA qualifier, earning eight career All-America honors. That included two in freshman, five in sophomore when the CSCAA awarded All-America awards to all qualifiers after the NCAA Championship meet was canceled, and another in junior.
His junior season saw his best individual finish at the NCAA Championships, placing 10th in the 200 IM. She also finished 25th in the 400 individual medley and 36th in the 200 breaststroke at this meet.
As a freshman and sophomore, she was also the team’s main breaststroke on her medley relays. She was jostled for this spot by Cecilia Porter as a junior.
Porter, who is on the Gators roster as a sophomore, has also been out for most of this season. She raced in the team’s first game against Florida Atlantic, winning the 100m breaststroke, but hasn’t raced since. The school declined to comment on her absence and she did not respond to messages.
This left the Gators very thin in the breaststroke races. Their best player so far this season, Tyler Mathieu, clocked 1:00.95 at the Georgia Tech Midseason Invite, which ranks her 17th in the conference.
Mathieu has primarily been a distance freestyle swimmer up to this point in her college career, although she has practiced more breaststroke this season to fill that gap.
With the breaststroke challenges, Florida’s 400m medley relay ranks just 10th out of 12 SEC teams so far this season.
Pearl was the Gators’ second-highest scoring athlete and top-scoring swimmer in the 2021 SEC Championship meet. She scored 74 points, led by a second-place finish in the 200 IM, as the Gators placed 2nd in the general.
Porter’s last official encounter was the 2021 U.S. Olympic Swimming Trials, where she finished 48th in the 100 breaststroke, 41st in the 200 IM and 41st in the 400 IM. It was his second Olympic trials meeting.
Pearl was the No. 6 ranked freshman in the high school class of 2018 when she enlisted in Florida. A native of McKinney, Texas, she was the 2018 Texas 6A High School State Champion in the 100 breaststroke and 200 IM, member of the US National Team in the 2017-18 season, winner of the US Open High Point 2017 and USA Swimming Scholastic All-American.
Florida’s next meet is the 2022 SEC Championships, which will be held at the University of Tennessee from Feb. 15-19. Based on a current season best swim, Florida would finish 5th in this meet in swim points.
Medical pensions typically offer athletes who suffer career-ending injuries the opportunity to continue paying for their education. Sports directors have the option of paying a scholarship to a student or offering financial aid; it is essentially a form of insurance for college athletes.
Medically retired athletes do not count towards their former program’s total scholarship limit. Medical retirement also cannot be reversed – if the athlete recovers unexpectedly, they cannot regain NCAA eligibility.
In recent years, medical retreats have been used more frequently due to mental health issues in addition to physical health issues.