Every swimming and diving squad in the Southeastern Conference prepares all year for one meet — one moment to get up on the big stage and showcase their talents to the whole conference.
Each individual hoping they can swim the fastest or dive the tightest to help his or her respective team prevail in the hope that they can also qualify for the NCAA Championships in March.
This is what the LSU swimming and diving squads look to bring to Athens, Ga., on Tuesday when they begin competing for the prize they have worked all year for: the SEC Championship.
LSU swimming coach Dave Geyer said his swimmers know exactly what is expected from them on this stage.
“All these individuals know what they need to do as a team to perform at the highest level,” Geyer said. “Some people like to have fun and dance around, and others like to sit with a towel over their head. That’s what this meet is about.”
All year Geyer has been focused on this meet, and he said there is no other meet like this in the country.
The 1988 men’s team is the only LSU team to win an SEC Championship since the program was implemented.
Both LSU squads will face a much bigger challenge than that of 1988, however, with the men ranked No. 25, leaving four SEC squads ahead of them. The Lady Tigers, currently unranked, face the challenge of seven women’s teams ranked in the top 25.
But Geyer said the team he has going out to Athens has the capability to do some great things.
“I think [the team] is in a great place right now, and it’s just about going in there and taking care of the job,” Geyer said.
LSU will look to swimmers like junior Frank Greeff to keep up his performance while also setting the stage for newcomers.
“You rely on your upperclassmen to help educate and mentor them,” Geyer said. “There’s no other meet like this in the country and [the underclassmen] will see that on Tuesday night when those first relays get ready to go off the blocks.”
Going into this meet, there are 12 SEC teams in the top 25, with seven on the women’s side and five on the men’s.
Geyer said in past SEC Championships, individuals qualified for the NCAA Championships with times that weren’t even recorded in the main finals for an event, which shows how tough the competition is.
Momentum heading up to the championship has been hard to come by, with the Tigers not competing since Jan. 18, but Geyer said he isn’t worried.
“It gave them some rest in terms of not having to worry about that high level of competition,” Geyer said. “From a mental perspective, it gave them a break from that too because we had meets to start off back to back in 2014.”
Tuesday’s meet begins with swimming preliminaries in the 200-yard medley relay and 800-yard freestyle relay at 10 a.m. followed by preliminaries in the women’s 1-meter dive at 11 a.m. and the men’s 3-meter dive preliminaries at 1:30 p.m.
Followed by the preliminaries in the afternoon, the final heats for those events begin with women’s 1-meter dive at 5:30 p.m. LSU senior diver Sean McKinney will look to take home first in the 3-meter dive at 6:30 p.m.
Lady Tigers’ freshman standout swimmer Kara Kopcso will begin her individual circuit Wednesday in the 200-yard individual medley, her first of four events before wrapping up in the 200-yard butterfly on Friday.
Greeff, the Tigers’ captain, will compete in the men’s 200-yard individual medley Wednesday and will end Friday in the men’s 200-yard butterfly.
The competition will be at its highest, and the LSU squads will have a lot to overcome to fulfill their hopes of bringing home an SEC Championship.