While college swimming and diving may have the longest competitive season of all varsity sports, it is clearly the structure of that season which is the most unique. The Big Red are coming off a 26-day layoff from competition, and for the first time in years, head coach Gregg Parini is instituting a slightly different strategy around their annual December three-day championship format meet.
Traditionally, the Big Red have traveled to locations such as University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Ind., or to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, in order to test themselves against some of the nation's best programs with the hope that the experience gained over the course of the meet would benefit the squad when the North Coast Athletic Conference Championships rolled around in February and in the season-closing NCAA Championships in March.
The Big Red will be returning to Miami for the sixth straight year, but they will be doing it with a pared-down squad for the purpose of spreading valuable experience around to the entire roster. Thirteen women and 18 men will make the trip to Oxford, while the remaining 15 women and 12 men will travel to western New York for Fredonia State's Blue Devil Invitational.
Parini is looking forward to seeing how his team responds to the new approach.
"This is going to be an interesting meet because our opponents will be rested and shaved, and we're not. The purpose of this meet is for our kids to swim strong preliminaries and then come back and swim strong finals. This is the only meet where you can replicate that experience, so we are looking long-term to set us up for conference and nationals."
Regarding the 26-day layoff from competition, Parini is pleased with how that experiment has turned out.
"We wanted our training to be centered and we wanted to establish a work ethic. There is an extended break between conference and nationals this year so we are going to have to be in great shape before we taper."
Last year, the Denison men placed third at the Miami Invitational and the women logged a sixth-place finish out of 10 teams. This year, the Big Red will go up against the likes of Division III rival Emory University, Division I Oakland University and host Miami, as well as Ohio State, a team DU already competed against in a dual meet on Nov. 5.
In Fredonia, Denison will send seven divers and 20 swimmers to the meet which will take place on Friday (Dec. 3) through Sunday (Dec. 5). Diver Gabe Dixson (New Albany, Ohio/New Albany) is coming off a six-dive school record performance against Kenyon on Nov. 7. Also diving will be junior Phil Meyer (River Forest, Ill./Oak Park-River Forest), sophomore Jeremy Schwartz (New Canaan, Conn./New Canaan) and first-year Matt Poulos (Munster, Ind./Munster). On the women's side, senior Lizzie Litwak (Loudonville, N.Y./Albany Academy for Girls), and freshmen Dallas Manson (Torrington, Conn./Torrington) and Rachel Keselring (West Bloomfield, Mich./West Bloomfield) will all get their first 11-dive test of the season.
Of the swimmers, Parini likes where the current mindset of this year's team.
"We needed some good leadership this year and the upperclassmen have brought that to the table. This is a very talented freshman class, and they needed to have that strong example at the top."
The men's swimmers are led by returning NCAC Swimmer of the Year Jake Lewing (Yardley, Pa./Pennsbury), senior Kyle Chabot (Washington, Mich./Stoney Creek), and juniors Dan Thurston (Ann Arbor, Mich./Huron), Mike Barczak (Beverly Hills, Mich./Brother Rice) and Michael DeSantis (Beverly Hills, Mich./Groves).
First-year swimmers like Al Weik (Lebanon, Pa./Cedar Crest), Spencer Fronk (Cherry Hills Village, Colo./Cherry Creek), Sean Chabot (Washington, Mich./Stoney Creek) and Brad Ratliff (Eldersburg, Md./Century) have also shown glimpses of why they were so highly touted out of high school.
The women check in with senior Ksenia Golovkina (Newton, Mass./Newton South) and sophomores Lindsay Zeberlein (Highlands Ranch, Colo./Mountain Vista) and Alyssa Swanson (Aurora, Colo./Regis Jesuit), all swimming at their best.
"Ksenia has been really zeroed in and swimming better than ever," said Parini. "It's great to have your seniors swimming well, and right now she's the No. 1 breaststroker in the country."
The Miami Invitational is also going to be an excellent test for rookie swimmers like Natalie Lugg (Woodbury, Minn./Woodbury), Morgan Nuess (Kettering, Ohio/Dayton Christian) and Tully Bradford (Lakeside Park, Ky./Notre Dame Academy).
The Big Red will kick-off the Miami Invitational on Thursday (Dec. 2) at 6 p.m. They will continue on Friday (Dec. 3) with preliminaries at 9 a.m. and finals at 6 p.m. The same schedule will follow on Saturday (Dec. 4).
