Rice University Athletics
Swimmers Head West This Weekend To Compete In NIKE Cup
11/13/2007 12:00:00 AM | Swimming & Diving
Nov. 13, 2007
Rice is one of nine swim teams competing for the NIKE Cup this Thursday through Saturday (Nov. 15-17) at the Belmont Plaza Olympic Pool in Long Beach, Calif. A stellar field of women's teams including 14th-ranked UCLA, BYU, Air Force, New Mexico, Pacific, UC San Diego (the No. 1 ranked team in Division II), UC Santa Cruz (ranked ninth in Division III) and host UC Irvine join the Owls in the three-day meet.
There are a total of 24 swim events on the weekend schedule. Preliminary heats will be held each morning where the top competitors will advance to the respective final round for that event. Rice head coach Seth Huston said the format and scheduling of the NIKE Cup is a good way to close out the fall semester and prepare for the big meets scheduled for the spring.
"This meet will have prelims and finals and is in the same format as C-USA and NCAA championships," Huston said. "There are a lot of swimmers and teams at this meet and we are looking forward to racing against some west coast competition that we do not normally see.
"We want to swim fast in the mornings in order to set us up for good positions at finals," Huston added. "Hopefully we will have some B cuts. I would like to see our best performances of the season thus far. This is our last meet till January so we want to step up our level of performance this weekend."
