BY LANDON WASHBURN, STAFF WRITER
The St. Bonaventure men’s and women’s swim and dive team are set to compete at the Atlantic 10 invitational this weekend in Ohio.
The men’s team is going into the invitational coming off of a 0-2 performance in the Cleveland State tri-meet with loses to both Cleveland State and Kenyon. The women’s team enters the competition with a winning record of 2-1 in dual meets on the year.
Both teams have put a lot of effort in for this weekend’s competition.
“This is one of our tougher training blocks of the season these past two weeks”, said head coach Michael Smiechowski. “We should be pretty broken down and tired going into the meet but its been a good couple weeks for us to be ready. We want to learn how to swim fast at all points in the season, this is a higher volume training point in the season.”
The Bonnies aim to continue to improve on their season from the past meets.
“Be better than we were last year at this point. Clean up some of the details that we struggled with at Cleveland State. Starts, finishes, turns and that kind of stuff I think we can clean up. Getting your hand on the wall first and challenging some pretty good teams this weekend is really what I want to see” added Coach Smiechowski.
Smiechowski also touched on being a good teammate.
“Swimming for each other means getting up and swimming when your tired, throwing down a fast swim for the sake of the team, getting up and doing things than are uncomfortable from a fatigue and effort standpoint for the other 40 athletes that are there. That’s always the experience we are looking to have.”
In the previous year, the men’s team finished with a score of 260. They finished third out of three teams last year in this competition. The women’s team had a score of 305.5 last year, finishing fourth out of four teams. 17 swimmers return for the men’s team and 15 return for the women’s team.
The Bonnies compete against George Mason, Cleveland State, Oakland University and Duquesne (Woman only) in Ohio for the invitational on October 29-30.
washbulj22@bonaventure.edu
