Colorado State University Athletics
Rams face first invitationals at home and away...
11/17/2010 12:00:00 AM | Women's Swimming & Diving
Nov. 17, 2010
Complete Release in PDF Format 
By Sarah Thomsen
Athletic Media Relations
FORT COLLINS, Colo. -- The Rams split up to compete in two separate invitationals this week, the Arena Invitational at the Belmont Plaza Olympic Pool in Long Beach, Calif., and the home CSU Invite at Moby Pool.
The individual athletes hope to achieve personal bests in their events, to qualify for prime seeding positions for the Mountain West Conference championships which will take place the end of February of next year.
“It’s just a fun meet to get a chance to compete with a lot of great teams and get some practice for what we will face at the championships,” Head Coach John Mattos said.
Thursday, the Rams begin competition at the Arena Invitational. They will be swimming preliminary races in the 200 Free, 500 Free, 200 IM, 50 Free and 800 Free. The top 32 swimmers in the prelims of each event make it back to compete in the finals (top 24 score).
Friday there will be prelims and finals in the 200 Medley Relay, 400 IM, 100 Fly, 200 Free, 100 Breast, 100 Backstroke and the 400 Medley Relay.
Saturday, CSU’s athletes in Calif. will compete in the 200 Backstroke, 100 Free, 200 Breaststroke, 200 Fly and the 400 Free. The invitational will not be at altitude, thus giving the Rams a bit of an advantage.
The Rams staying home will be competing in the CSU Invite. The home event will be held in 17 event order.
This will be the first time this season that the Rams will swim the 400 IM and the 1650 Free.
Quoting Head Coach John Mattos…
On how the team will perform in the separate invitationals:
“It’s not so much how they will perform, all we’re looking for right now are season best performances. That doesn’t mean lifetime-best performances. That doesn’t mean winning or losing, because that’s not what this is all about. It’s just about trying to get times at the end of our early season phase that will exemplify the hard work that they have put in up to this point.”
On the events the Rams will be swimming:
“We’re looking for times in events that we haven’t even swum this year. We haven’t swum a 400 IM, we haven’t swum but once in the 400 Medley Relay, we haven’t swum any 1650s yet. So these will be events that we will be looking to get some quality performances in. That will allow us to go into the conference championships, with the athletes that we take there, with a little bit better seeding potential and get in some better teams to race against.”
On seeding positions for the coming MWC Championships:
“I’m looking forward to us to try to solidify places in the top five or top six, minimum seed times, in the relays. That’s why this meet will take on significance, we place pretty high priority on those relay events. The individual events should take care of themselves.”