Hoosiers play host for IU Invitational

This weekend the No. 13 IU women's swimming and diving team will be holding the IU Invitational at Counsilman Billingsley Aquatic Center. \nThis will be the first three-day event for the team and the field will include No. 23 Missouri and Big Ten foes Michigan State and Illinois among other schools.\nIU swim coach Dorsey Tierney said she is excited about this weekend's meet, and she wants to see how the girls can hold up in a three-day event.\n"The main thing I want to take out of this meet is sustained energy throughout the three days," Tierney said. "We need to practice being good for six total sessions."\nThis meet should be a first real test of the season for the girls. \n"It's more of a mental challenge, but I would say this is our first mental test of the season," Tierney said. \nThe Invitational will start each day with preliminaries at 9 a.m., and then today and Saturday the finals will commence at 6 p.m. On Sunday the finals will begin at 3 p.m. \nMissouri and IU are the only two ranked teams in the field, but Illinois and Pittsburgh also come in with winning records. Tierney feels this will be a good meet for the girls because they will face up against some foreign competition and some conference rivals. \n"We don't really know a lot about the teams coming in except Illinois and Michigan State, but I think it will be good to go up against some teams," Tierney said. "Arkansas usually has good sprinters."\nThe team is hoping senior Brooke Taflinger and freshman Leila Vaziri will be able to step up. Taflinger is very excited about this weekend's invitational.\n"It's definitely more exciting because people are coming here," Taflinger said. "It should be some really good competition, but hopefully we will swim well and have a good meet."\nSophomore Kristen Bradley also said she is prepared for this weekend's meet, and she is hoping the team could end with a win. \n"It is our first succession meet, and we talked about this, and winning would be a great goal," Bradley said.\nAlong with Tierney, the team stressed the importance of having a quality meet because the three days are going to be draining on them. Tierney said it would be a way to see if the conditioning has paid off.\nThe team has a 3-1 dual meet record coming into this weekend and placed third at the SMU Classic and the Indiana Intercollegiates. \nLast year's Invitational was a successful one for the team. They won the meet by beating second place Tennessee by more than 300 points. Senior Sarah Fiden broke a couple of school records last year at the meet. Tierney feels the team is going to be ready this weekend, and she is looking forward to having an invitational here again.\n"It's more of a pride thing for us to be good everyday, and it's a real sign of conditioning for us," Tierney said. "We'll be a little short-handed. Two of the girls' grandparents died, so this again will just be a challenge where we need everyone to step up."\n-- Contact staff writer Chris Hopper at chopper@indiana.edu.