The Arizona men and women’s swim teams, ranked No. 17 and No. 9 respectively, are back on the road again this weekend as they head to Southern California.
The Wildcats will take on USC (M: No. 6, W: No. 1) on Friday at McDonald’s Swim Stadium and compete against UCLA (M: unranked, W: No. 15) on Saturday at Spieker Aquatics Center in Los Angeles.
“I want to be a little better than we have been,” head coach Eric Hansen said. “I’m really happy with how the season is going so far, although I think more of the quality I’m seeing right now is in workouts as opposed to races. I think we are transferring it better each meet and I hope to be just a little better in LA.”
Arizona has been victorious in each of its meets this season, edging Hawaii, Washington State, UNLV and Denver. The Wildcats have been led this year by some of the nation’s top swimmers, including free-stylists Margo Geer and Shapira Bar-Or, and back-strokers Lauren Smart and Bonnie Brandon.
“[Geer] is number one in the country right now,” Hansen said. “I think she can perform even better than she has. She will do great things [at the US Winter Nationals] in Austin this December.”
Freshmen breaststroker Andrew Sovero and free-stylist Hannon Daigler look to add more depth to the team this weekend, looking to place first in their respective events.
“I’m expecting to just have fun and race hard this weekend,” Sovero said. “We haven’t rested for any meets, and we’ve just started to taper, so hopefully we will see some better times.”
Tapering is a technique used by many swim teams in order to boost performance, as athletes need to recover after prolonged periods of high-intensity training. Tapering allows swimmers the opportunity to recover and adapt to the level they performed at during the training program.
“We have to work on the little details,” Daigler said. “I think we have done pretty well this season for the amount of training we’ve done. We are expecting everyone to step up this week and bring home another win.”
“USC is a really good team, and I’m excited to go up against them,” Geer said. “It is definitely going to be our fiercest competition yet!”
