BATON ROUGE — The LSU swimming and diving team will face its first test of the season when it travels to College Station to compete at the Texas A&M Invitational held at the Student Rec Center Natatorium this Friday through Sunday.
The Tigers will go up against four teams during the three-day event, including UL-Monroe, SMU and host Texas A&M. Arkansas’ women’s team is scheduled to compete as well.
Preliminaries are set to begin at 10 a.m. on Friday and Saturday, followed by a finals session that will get underway at 6 p.m. Sunday’s schedule will feature a 9:30 a.m. starting time for the prelims and conclude with finals at 4:30 p.m. Diving prelims are slated to begin at 1 p.m. each day, followed by the finals later each evening.
“This is a great chance for us to see how we can compete at a championship setting,” said head coach Adam Schmitt. “Obviously, we are going up against better competition, which will certainly prepare us for the SEC and NCAA Championships next spring. It will also give us another good indication of how we have progressed and where we need to be.”
LSU enters the meet after its women’s team earned a spilt against Arkansas and Alabama, while the men fell to the Crimson Tide to start the fall season.
The Tigers have earned some favorable seeds in the heat sheets after producing several top times two weeks ago in the home opener.
Senior Jan Minartz will carry the No. 2 seed into the 200 and 500 freestyle. Three other Tigers are seeded first, including Justin Boyes in the 200 individual medley, Jared Strecker in the 100 backstroke and Christian Clausen in the 100 breaststroke.
LSU swept both relays against Arkansas and Alabama with solid times that earned them the top seeds in the men’s 200 medley relay and 800 free relay.
Following the A&M Invitational, LSU will break before returning to action at the Florida Classic Meet on Dec. 14 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.