Jayhawks To Honor Seniors At First Home Meet
LAWRENCE, Kan. – The Kansas swimming and diving team will compete in its first home meet of the 2013-14 season, Saturday, when it takes on North Dakota and Nebraska-Omaha at 1 p.m. in Robinson Natatorium. The meet will also serve as Senior Day for the program as seven seniors will be honored prior to the meet.
Captains Alison Lusk, Alison Moffit and Morgan Sharp lead the skilled group of seniors that will be honored before the meet. Sharing in the festivities with them are Sofiia Filatova, Alyssa Golden, Malia Johnson and Sara Snow.
“The three captains are great and the other four are on our leadership council,” head coach Clark Campbell said. “They’ve done a lot in and out of the pool for the team. In a way, it’s just the start of their senior season. Every meet is a reason to celebrate our seniors. It will be a good time to reflect on what they’ve brought to the program. It’s going to be a good day.”
Kansas (0-2) is looking to grab its first win of the season after falling to both Air Force and TCU earlier in the season.
“In a way we use this as a recruiting opportunity, but this is all about the seniors and having a meet at home,” Campbell said. “We don’t get a lot of home meets and this is an opportunity to host schools and get excited about competing in front of our family and friends.”
For the competition, senior Morgan Lynch, who holds the school record in the 500- 1000- and 1650-yard freestyle races, will highlight the undefeated North Dakota (2-0) squad as they look to continue their undefeated streak. The UNO Mavericks, 0-3 in dual meets, will be looking to snag its first victory of the season. Both of KU’s opponents are slated to swim in meets today, before swimming against the Jayhawks this weekend.
“For North Dakota and UNO, this is a big step for their programs to swim against a major university like KU,” Campbell said. “We expect them to be very excited to compete against a BCS-type institution. Their swimmers will be excited. There’s a good amount of swimmers that are from this region. A couple swimmers from both schools will be coming here and participating in front of their friends and family.”
The Jayhawks will also be relying on the seniors and sophomore Chelsie Miller to have strong performances. Campbell has placed them in events they don’t compete in regularly in hopes of improving their times for the events in which they specialize.
“We are going to see the 400 IM, which is Chelsie Miller’s marquee event,” Campbell said. “I think Alison Lusk has been getting better every week. Sofiia is going to get a chance to swim in the 200 fly, which will help her improve her 100-yard butterfly time. All in all, we are going to have over 100 races from the kids. There will be a lot of racing going on. It will be a good chance to see where we are now as opposed to where we were earlier in the season.”
Saturday’s meet features 12 individual swim events, two relay races and two diving events. The full order of events is as follows:
200-yard Medley Relay
1000-yard Freestyle (Diving begins and will run concurrent with swim events)
200-yard Freestyle
100-yard Backstroke
100-yard Breaststroke
200-yard Butterfly
50-yard Freestyle
20 minute break
100-yard Freestyle
200-yard Backstroke
200-yard Breaststroke
500-yard Freestyle
100-yard Butterfly
15 minute break
400-yard Individual Medley
200-yard Freestyle Relay
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