AMES, Iowa- The Iowa State swimming and diving team looks to make an impression on its fellow conference opponents Friday as the Cyclones travel to Columbia, Mo. for the Big 12 Relays. The meet begins at 9 a.m at the Mizzou Aquatics Center.
The Cyclones finished fifth with 42 points at last season’s event and the Cyclones will be looking to rack up more points and move up the ranks.
“It is always a question mark going in because we are swimming relays,” head coach Duane Sorenson said. “The freshmen are new to this so we are wondering how they’re going to respond.”
The Cyclones will look to their strength in the backstroke and butterfly to earn the team points, but Sorenson also knows that they are up against some stiff competition with four Big 12 teams finishing in the top-40 at last season’s NCAA Championships.
“We have some strong relays, we should do well in our backstroke, butterfly and breaststroke relays,” Sorenson said. “We are trying to put up a lineup which is solid. We could swim lights out and finish anywhere from first to fifth. It is going to give us a better indication at where everyone is at and what we need to work on in practice.”
The event offers the Cyclone swimmers a chance to compete in a variety of events to show how they can contribute to the squad during the season.
“We are experimenting here a little bit,” Sorenson said. “We will put our women in some races that they normally wouldn’t swim in to see how they respond. We want to get an idea how our team is shaping up because we have some pretty big dual meets coming up here the next two weekends.”
The Cyclone divers will not be competing in their traditional six-dive format as they will be in teams consisting of either two divers doing three dives each or three divers doing two dives each.
“It makes it easier in that they don’t have to have all their dives ready,” diving coach Jeff Warrick said. “What we try to do is pick who the best person is for a certain category to maximize our score and place high.”
The divers will use the event to work on some of their more challenging dives but the objective is to place high and earn the team points.
“We are definitely trying to place our best,” Warrick said. “The divers haven’t been getting a lot of repetitions of all their dives yet.”
