Confident squad heads to NCAAs

The IU women's swimming and diving team begins its bid for the school's best ever finish at the NCAA Championships today at the Jamail Swimming Center in Austin, Texas. The Hoosiers best finish came in 1980 when they concluded the meet 11th.\nComing off last year's 13th place finish, swimming coach Dorsey Tierney believes this year's squad of qualifiers for the NCAA meet is deeper.\n"We have twice as many swims going into the meet as we did last year and hopefully that will correlate into four times as many finals swims," Tierney said. "This is a younger group, but with a lot more depth. I am excited about our relay opportunities and am confident in anybody we put up on the relays."\nThe Hoosiers have 11 qualifiers who will compete in a total of 26 individual events and will also be able to race in the relays after automatically qualifying their 400-yard free relay team at the Indiana Open in early March.\nBig Ten Swimmer of the Year senior Susan Woessner believes the Hoosiers depth will help them compete in more events, but also create a better team atmosphere that could also help their performance.\n"The closer you can get to having a full team the better," Woessner said. "Any time you can go with team support you are much better off than being an individual; that has been our strength all season. It is definitely a goal to make the top 10 this year. Taking three tremendous divers who will score and trying to get our relays into the top eight will really help us."\nThe three-day meet format begins today with swimming prelims starting at 11 a.m., diving prelims at 1 p.m. and all event finals beginning at 7 p.m.\nThe Hoosiers will look for strong performances in today's events from sophomore Sarah Fiden and junior Tina Gretlund. Fiden has the 22nd fastest time coming into the meet in the 500-yard freestyle, while Gretlund has the 19th fastest time in the 200-yard individual medley. Junior Kristy Martin and sophomore Brooke Taflinger will also compete in the 200-yard IM.\nWoessner, junior Anne Williams and sophomore Meghan Medendorp will also compete in the 50-yard freestyle today. The 200-yard freestyle relay and 400-yard medley relay will also be competed in during tonight's finals.\nThree Hoosier divers are among the team's eleven qualifiers. Senior Erin Quinn, junior Sara Reiling and sophomore Cassandra Cardinell will look to continue their impressive diving after Quinn and Reiling each won an event at last weekend's NCAA Zone Diving Championships.\nDiving coach Jeff Huber is confident his divers will continue to improve at the NCAA's, as they have done all year.\n"It definitely helps to go with a team, to have more fun and to stay loose," Huber said. "We are proud of the fact that we have a good size team of divers going. It will be a tough meet, but our goal is to dive tough and continue to set personal best records. We are on an upward swing and we tend to do that looking back on past years."\nToday's lone diving competition is the one-meter springboard in which Quinn is the lone Hoosier competitor. Quinn hopes her experience of previous NCAAs and international competitions will help her to dive will in her last collegiate meet.\n"Being a senior it helps, because I have been there a lot and I know what it takes," Quinn said. "I don't want to think of it as my last meet, but I hope to do well as it is my last NCAAs. We just go out there and see what happens."\nIt will take a combination of strong competitions from both swimmers and divers, but as far as the Hoosiers chances of reaching their top 10 goal; Tierney thinks it can be done.\n"Can we build on our 13th place finish last year, I really don't know," Tierney said. "I certainly think so, we are much better this year"