BATON ROUGE – The LSU swimming and diving team is set to host Loyola and Tulane to start the season at 6 p.m. Friday at the LSU Natatorium. The men will be competing against Loyola while the women will be going against both Loyola and Tulane.
“I think some of my questions for our dual meet lineup were answered last week with our intrasquad,” said LSU head swimming coach Dave Geyer. “September meets are always hard to gauge what we will see. There are so many different adaptations going on with the start of the school year, training in the water, weight room and so on. I do know our team will be ready to compete in the Nat though.”
The Lady Tigers came out on top over both Loyola and Tulane last season, beating Loyola 72-5 in the FGCU Classic and defeating Tulane 161-79 in a dual meet at Tulane. The men also defeated Loyola at the FGCU Classic by a score of 53-18.
The Tigers return 10 swimmers and divers that qualified for NCAAs and will be looking to get off to positive starts this season.
In the pool, senior Jake Markham will lead the way as he looks to break his own school record in the 200 free, in which he finished 20th at NCAAs last season.
In the diving well, LSU has four divers returning after qualifying for the NCAAs last season, including all three returning male divers. Juniors Matthew Phillip and Matt McClellan finished 23rd and 41st nationally, while sophomore Juan Celaya-Hernandez finished 28th nationally in his first season as a Tiger. For the women, junior Lizzie Cui finished fifth in one-meter and 17th in both three-meter and platform last season.
“As our first official competition this will be an opportunity to compete. This is a first step in the process of our season. We’ve been working really hard and look to test our competition lists as a benchmark for what we need to work on moving forward,” said LSU head diving coach Doug Shaffer.
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Order of events:
200 Medley Relay
1000 Free
200 Free
100 Back
100 Breast
200 Fly
50 Free
-diving-
100 Free
200 back
200 Breast
500 Free
100 Fly
-diving-
200 IM
400 Free relay