It won’t be a walk in the park when LSU’s swimming and diving teams open their seasons today at 2 p.m. and Thursday at 2 p.m. against Florida. “It is a tough first meet,” said LSU coach Adam Schmitt. “But we usually don’t have those warm up types of meets. We just get right into the season and start competing.” Florida’s teams finished second in the Southeastern Conference last season, and the women’s team finished sixth nationally. The men and women usually swim at the same time, but the Tigers will face each team on a different day. The men face Florida today, and the women face Florida on Thursday. Schmitt said he thinks having the teams compete at different times is interesting.  “It is going to allow us to focus on each team and see what each team can do,” he said.The Tigers traveled to Gainesville, Fla., last year, and the men and women fell to the Gators, 132-109 and 137-84, respectively.  But Schmitt said he expects the teams will be very competitive with the Gators this time.”It’s going to be a little bit of a boxing match where they’ll win some events, and we’ll win some,” Schmitt said. “We’ll just see what happens.”LSU senior Monica McJunkin said she’s excited to see how her team will perform, especially in the relays.”That is the best part of the meet to me,” McJunkin said. “It gets the vibe going and ends the meet at a good point.”Florida’s women’s team set a Southeastern Conference record in the 200-medley relay last season.”We are definitely not intimidated by that at all,” McJunkin said. “We’re just going to go in and do our own thing and swim as fast as we can swim.”LSU freshman Morgan McGee said she’s nervous and excited about her first meet being against a team like Florida. “It will be fun to race a really fast team,” McGee said. Schmitt said he expects most of his freshmen to have a big meet.”I also expect our seniors to lead as well,” Schmitt said. “We’ve got a good crew of seniors, so we are going to be leaning a lot on them this year.”McJunkin said the team is ready to get their season under way. “We’re just really excited,” she said. “We’re ready to put up some good times and see what we can do.”—-Contact Amos Morale at [email protected]