By Zach Waltz
Assistant Sports Editor
The men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams travels to Akron, Ohio today for the Zippy Invitational at Akron.
The Bonnies come into the meet fresh after resting when they got to go home for the Thanksgiving break. The meet be held over three days at Ocasek Natatorium, concluding on Dec. 8.
Men’s Head Coach Sean McNamee said the Bonnies have had a lot of rest coming into this meet.
“We treat this as an opportunity where it’s the first time the guys are coming off a little rest after being home for Thanksgiving,” McNamee said. “I don’t kill them too bad this week in practice-they actually get a morning off, which is the first practice they’ve had off all season.”
Women’s Head Coach Seth Johnson said the break gives his team a good mid-season boost of energy.
“Basically, it’s a good recovery time for them,” Johnson said. “Leading into an invitational like Akron, we don’t normally rest for it, but they get a little natural rest coming off Thanksgiving break. It works well that way, so they’re a little sharper than usual. It works out well preparing us for the last meet of the first semester.”
McNamee said he expects the Bonnies will perform well in Akron because of the extra downtime.
“Usually, we have a mixed bag,” McNamee said. “We’re looking to be competitive in races again and put together some solid relays coming into the Christmas break.”
Johnson said he expects Mid-American Conference teams like Toledo and Akron to provide some difficult competition.
“There’s going to be 10 or 11 women’s teams there,” Johnson said. “A lot of Mid American Conference schools – the MAC is a very solid swimming conference. Other schools use this meet as a full-taper meet. We don’t use it as that, but other teams do, so they will be swimming faster than you normally do at this time of year because of that. There’s a lot of factors that play into it.”
Tapering is a style of practice where practices go from harder to easier, the easiest being right before the meet. It allows swimmers to perform at their best at the meet because they haven’t been doing as much work in practice.
McNamee said the Bonnies’ biggest obstacle is overcoming the mid-season spurt of injuries and illness.
“We’re still in need of getting healthy and getting everyone on the same page,” McNamee said. “We’re hoping that this will week will be one of the first times this season we’ve had everybody in the water at the same time.”
The men’s team is coming off a third-place finish at the Pitt Invitational before break on Nov. 22-24. They finished behind the University of Cincinnati with 1125 points and Pittsburgh, with 1455.5 points. The women’s team did not have a meet before break.
McNamee said most of the swimmers had some of their best times of the season at Pitt.
“It’s a good opportunity for us,” McNamee said. “We actually train right through it. I don’t want to belittle it, but we use it as glorified practice. We had a number of season-best times and development in some areas.”
