Nov. 30, 2005
NORMAL, Ill. -
With two weeks of rest and practice, the women's swimming and diving team are ready for a full weekend of competition. The Redbirds will be traveling to Akron, Ohio to participate in the Summa Care Invitational for the fifth year in a row. The Invitational begins on Friday, December 2 and ends on Sunday, December 4 with preliminaries in the morning and based on pre-lime scores, the top twenty-four swimmers will advance for finals every evening.
Some schools that will be competing this weekend in the Summa Care Invitational include Ohio State University, University of Buffalo, Clarion University, and University of Akron. Head coach Steve Paska is looking forward to the evenly balanced competition.
"We are going to go into competition battling," Paska said. "We had a great week of practice before break. Now we are cutting back and resting to prepare for this weekend. We want to put our best team forward. This weekend will be very competitive."
The balanced field of competition will make for an outstanding weekend. The team is looking to gain season and personal best times that will be strong point contributors to the teams overall success.
"We want to score as many points as we can," Paska said. "This is an exciting weekend because Akron has been our main objective for the fall semester. This weekend will allow us to see the depth of the team and I am really looking forward to it."
Head diving coach Tom Davidson is enthusiastic to see the divers compete again.
"I want the diving team to be able to contribute to the overall success for the team," Davidson said. "This weekend should be fun. I just want to see them compete again with the dives they are the best at."
All of the six divers will be competing this weekend on the three-meter boards for the second time this season, and the team looks to use its strong dives to gain the most points possible.
"We will be up against the same level of competition," Davidson said. "I think this weekend will be good for Emily (Hirt) to show the other divers that she can compete with them at that level. She is only 2.06 points away from qualifying for NCAA diving regionals. I am looking forward to her accomplishing that goal."
