Dec. 5, 2010
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By RICHIE ZAWISTOWSKI
IOWA CITY, Iowa — The new UI Aquatic Center might not have the same capacity as Kinnick Stadium or Carver-Hawkeye Arena, but don’t let that fool you. The home for the swimming Hawkeyes gives an advantage to Iowa simmers with the support from the UI faithful. In day two of the Hawkeye Invitational, Iowa leads all teams with a score of 805. The next closest team is Notre Dame who has 605 points.
“It’s always nice to compete and home,” said UI head coach Marc Long. “A meet like this, typically we’d have to go on the road. We tried to do it last year but we couldn’t even have diving because we took the pool that they dove in. But we’ve wanted to do this for years. It’s great for our team to try different lineups, and different things as more of preparation for the end of the year.”
This is the second year of the Hawkeye Invitational, although the meet was held in the Field House pool. Long said that while the meet is named the same, the invitational is different. Last year’s meet was held before Thanksgiving, and had “quite a bit different feel.”
“It was a different mixture of teams, and now a little higher level of overall depth and competition,” said Long. “And you can’t even compare the facilities; it’s an elite level competition venue now.”
No matter the level of competition for the Hawkeyes, they have seemed at home in the new aquatic center. Iowa set six pool records, including one in the final event of the second day. In the 800 free relay, Iowa won the event with a time of 6:36.63, and the time also surpassed the meet record by almost 20 seconds.
After the second day of the tournament, the Hawkeyes are sitting high.
“There’s a lot more events today than on the first day,” said Long. “We wanted to see some racing (Saturday), and we wanted to be able to win any meet we were in. Whether that’s a bonus heat or a consolation final heat, and I think we did a nice job of that tonight.”
Iowa heads into the third and final day of the tournament with a 200-point lead over the second-place team. While Long likes the position Iowa has put itself in, the coach is looking ahead to the preparation for the final day of the tournament.
“Right now we have to prepare,” said Long. “We’re going into the third day of competing with prelim’s and finals so they have to prepare well with the cool down (Saturday), and in preparation for (Sunday) and step it up again in the morning.”