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Moffett: swimmers and divers prepare for Horizon League championship meet

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IAA Fan:
Youngstown State swimmers and divers prepare for Horizon League championship meet

By Jon Moffett

jmoffett@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

Couples traditionally receive something made of tin or aluminum for their 10th anniversaries. But Matt Anderson is hoping for something a little more golden.

Anderson, the swimming coach at Youngstown State, and his team are celebrating their 10th trip to the Horizon League championship meet. The four-day meet begins today at the Busbey Natatorium on the campus of Cleveland State.

And Anderson said this could be the best conference meet he’s seen in a long time.

“This is maybe the most competitive meet I have seen in my eight years I have been a part of the Horizon League,” he said. “Legitimately, there are probably five or six teams that have a shot at jostling around to make the top three and potentially win it.”

The Penguins are one of those teams, Anderson said. But it’s going to take a lot to knock off the top two or three teams.

Green Bay has won the meet for the past six years and eight times overall. Milwaukee has claimed the second spot the past three years and won it in 2001. The Panthers also have nine third-place finishes. And when Milwaukee isn’t in second place, it’s been Wright State in their place.

YSU has never placed better than fifth place in its nine trips to the meet.

So in order for the Penguins stop eating the bubbles of their conference opponents, it’s going to take flawless efforts by YSU’s key swimmers and divers. And Anderson said there is hope.

“It’s going to be a very tight meet all the way through,” Anderson said. “But if we swim well, step up to race and do the things we’re capable of doing, we can be in that mix.”

The meet kicks off with preliminary races and dives at 10 a.m. each day. The finals take place at 5:30 p.m. that same day. Anderson said athletes are locked into their spots depending on their individual performances in the prelims.

The top eight times in the preliminary races will earn the top eight final places in the race, even if a time in places nine through 16 are better. So in many ways, the prelims are just as important — if not more — than the finals.

“There is a huge emphasis on the prelims, because if you don’t make it in the morning, there is no night for you,” he said. “You see it all the time where someone had an off day in the morning, and a great swim at night and they should be in the top eight places. Well, they can’t.”

How the athletes prepare is different, too.

Take sophomore roommates Casey Hill and Samantha Roberts, for example.

Hill said she sometimes psychs herself out before dives at this level.

“A lot of it, for me, is mental preparation,” Hill said. “Mentally preparing myself for a huge meet like this is important for me to be able to dive as well as I have been.”

Hill admits that she is a perfectionist and often lets the dive become bigger than it is to her. But she said she uses that to fine-tune her craft.

Roberts is the complete opposite.

With the tips of her hair dyed pink and a laid-back attitude, Roberts said it’s her job to keep Hill in check and just go with the flow.

“Maybe for the first race I’m a little nervous, but after that I’m fine,” she said. “I’m kind of just a laid-back person and I just put everything behind me. I’ve worked too hard just to get here, so if I’m nervous and I psych myself out, I wouldn’t be able to do as well as I would have if I had a positive attitude.”

Roberts said she was asked to be Hill’s roommate personally by diving coach Nick Gavolas in order to keep her sane.

“He was just like, ‘you two need to be roommates again next year because you’re the only one who knows how to calm her down,’” she said, laughing. “I’m just a laid-back type of person.”

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