Swimming, diving teams open home season

The IU swimming and diving teams open their home schedule tonight in a dual meet as they take on Michigan and Texas in the Counsilman-Billingsley Aquatic Center.

The women are coming off a second place finish at the SMU Classic this past weekend, falling only to top-ranked USC.

Sophomore Brooklyn Snodgrass finished first in the 100-meter backstroke and 200-meter backstroke, while also winning the 400 medley relay. Also part of that relay team was freshman Gia Dalesandro, who earned Big Ten weekly honors for her performance at the meet.

IU Coach Ray Looze expects tough competition this weekend as well.

“They faced some great teams,” Looze said. “We continue to put their backs against the wall.”

The men’s team hopes to see improvement after two losses to California and Stanford in its season opener. This weekend presents one of the biggest challenges of their season, as they face No. 4 Texas and No. 1 Michigan, which is the defending national champion.

Looze is looking for his team to take the next step against well-coached, high-ranked teams by winning more races and posting some of the better times in the NCAA.

“It’s the kind of competition that I feel is important for us to go up against, so that we’re prepared for things of greater importance like NCAAs and Big Tens that happen late in the season,” Looze said.

The team had just come out of its general conditioning phase and wasn’t happy with its overall performance against its first two opponents. They are now making the transition into a different training cycle with more speed and resistance training.

They hope to see improvements this weekend.

“There will be multiple NCAA finalists in every heat,” senior Cody Miller said. “So the fast heat from every event is basically an NCAA final.”

The men’s diving team also hopes to bounce back this weekend. Senior Darian Schmidt won both the 1-meter and 3-meter events against California and defeated reigning NCAA champion Kristian Ipsen on the 3-meter at Stanford.

IU Coach Drew Johansen expects big things from him, as well as senior divers Kate Hillman and Cassidy Kahn, again this weekend.

“If they stay true to their technique and stay true to the process of the dive, I’ll be happy with the result,” Johansen said.

Johansen is looking for consistency and for the divers to score in as many events as possible.

“It’s going to be a good gage to see how we’ll match up against some of the top programs from last year,” he said.

Looze agrees it’s best to be facing tough competition now in order to be the best they can be at the end of the season.

“We’re trying to really dial it up a notch in terms of putting the highest level of competition in front of our swimmers and divers that we can,” Looze said. “The only ranking that really matters is the last one.”

Follow reporter Grace Palmieri on Twitter @gpalmieri7.