Swimmers set to open season

Swimming and diving head coach Ray Looze said last season was a good year for both the men and women’s team.

“The women won Big Ten’s and finished 10th at NCAA,” Looze said. “Those were two fine results and then we had our first individual NCAA champion, Kate Fesenko. In the men’s side, we finished fifth in the Big Ten and 31st at NCAA.”

Friday both teams start their dual meet season.

Looze said these home meets, against Northwestern on Friday and Kentucky on Saturday, are useful to get the team ready for the championships — the Big Ten championship at the end of February and the NCAA championship at the end of March.

“We’ll continue to have two to three dual meets a month and they are designed against competition that’s really going to push us,” Looze said.

Looze said each season builds upon itself, and this year he would like to see both teams compete for Big Ten titles.

“I’d like to see a large group of the boys and the girls make the NCAA meet so that we can be represented in the national championship at a higher level, ideally top ten,” he said.

Looze said this year the women’s team has a lot of veterans that have done the whole season and know what it’s going to be like through the dual meets and through the championships.

“We have a pretty big freshman class of girls, and our upperclassmen are doing a good job of trying to get them prepared for what they are going to face,” Looze said. “The dual meets that we have set up for the women should get them prepared to be at their best when it’s most important, which is at the end of the season.”

Junior Katelyn Ishee said the women’s team has made really big strides to get to where they are now.

“This program has come a long way,” she said. “The freshmen we have brought in this year are amazing. I’m really looking forward to see how great the freshmen do.”

Looze said this year the men’s team has more talent than they have had in a while.

Senior Bryan Chovanec has been in the team since he was a freshman. He said over the years the program and the team has certainly gotten better.

Freshman Cody Miller, said that coming form a club team in high school and now been at a varsity team it’s a lot more intense and a lot more technical.

“Our incoming freshman class is really strong and it’s just going to get stronger every year,” Miller said. “We are building a really strong team.”

Chovanec said he is looking forward to the Big Ten championship and also to be able and compete at the NCAA championships.

As for the team’s strength, Ishee said the strength of both teams lies in how hard they are training right now.

“At this early in the season I think we have been working really hard, and we are ahead of where we were last year,” she said.

Looze said he encourages anybody who has never been to swimming and diving meets to come and watch both teams.

“We have a new high definition score board, which is really going to improve the experience of the fans,” Looze said.

Chovanec also said he would like to see more people come to their meets.

“That would be a nice thing, because we don’t have that big of a fan base,” he said. “People probably don’t think it’s exciting, but if they would come and see, it gets pretty exciting, especially when we are facing big teams and it’s a close race.”

Ishee said this year the team has Big Ten meets at home, adding she hopes those events will encourage people to come and fill the stands.

“This year has been a lot about ‘24 Sports, One Team’ so we’ve been trying to go see a lot of other sports compete and it’s really great when we have people at our meets,” she said. “We’re working really hard to represent IU.”