With the Hoosiers coming off of off-season training, returning several individuals boasting various accolades achieved throughout the summer and gaining a large and talented freshman class, prospects are high as the IU men and women's swimming and diving teams head into their first regular season meet.
Both teams will open their seasons on Friday in Lexington, Ky., in a dual meet against two Southeastern Conference teams, Kentucky and Tennessee.
After the loss of Brittany Strumbel, Allysa Vavra, Margaux Farrell and Laura Ryan, four leading scorers on the women's side, the Hoosiers will be looking to the incoming freshman class to step up immediately.
Freshmen Brooklyn Snodgrass and Haley Lipps will be making their collegiate debuts in the dual meet. A top tier Canadian swimmer, Snodgrass finished sixth in the 100-meter backstroke and twelfth in the 200-meter backstroke at Canadian Olympics trials. This past summer, Lipps won two gold medals at the YMCA National Long Course Championships in the 400-meter freestyle with a national record time of 4:17.56 and won the 200 IM with a time of 2:19.52. Lipps is also a member of the USA Swimming 2012-13 Junior National team.
"They are the strongest group of freshman that I've seen since I've been here," junior Cody Miller said. "They've really integrated into the program and have started competing well in workouts better than other freshmen have in the past, even better than my class did, which is pretty big."
Junior Eric Ress will be returning to his first meet since the 2011 NCAA Championships after sitting out the 2011-2012 season to train for the London Olympics.
Although he fell .3 seconds short of qualifying for the Olympics, the 2011 NCAA runner-up in both the 100- and 200-yard backstroke said his return to collegiate swimming is much anticipated.
In addition to Ress' scoring potential, the Hoosiers return nine of its ten point scorers from a Top Ten finish at NCAA Championships last March.
One of those scorers is sophomore Steve Schmuhl who placed 14th in the 200-yard butterfly at NCAAs. In a break out summer, Schmuhl qualified for the 2012 Short Course World Championships after earning a bronze medal at the US Open of swimming in the 400-meter IM.
Junior Cody Miller, a four-time Big Ten Champion in the 100- and 200-breaststroke, hopes to improve from his seventh-place finish in the 100 breaststroke, 10th place finish in the 200 IM and ninth-place finish in the 200 breaststroke at the 2012 NCAA Championships.
The defending Big Ten Champion in the 100 backstroke, junior James Wells, had a great off-season and is expected to do big things in the pool this season.
"I called it a while ago that James Wells was going to be up there," Ress said. "If there is one person that sticks out, it's him."
"He's pushed me more than I've ever been pushed by anybody else in this program, so I feel like both of us can really do big things at dual meets, conference, and eventually the NCAAs," Ress said.
The IU divers are also looking forward to starting off the season, especially after training with John Wingfield, the new assistant diving coach. Junior Darian Schmidt, the 2012 Big Ten Diver of the Championships, won the 3-meter springboard with a school-record score of 459.30 while senior Mick Dell'Orco was fourth in the same event.On the 1-meter, Schmidt was third and Dell'Orco was seventh.
Dell'Orco's eighth place finish and Schmidt's 12th place finish on the 1-meter at the NCAA Championships earned both of them All-America honors. Schmidt also posted a seventh place finish on the 3-meter and 16th on the platform.
Posting a third-place finish on the platform at the 2012 NCAA Championships, senior Amy Cozad leads the women's divers this season.
