Rice University
The Amerian Athletic Conference Swimming Championships
Owls Open Pursuit of AAC Crown on Wednesday
2/15/2023 9:55:00 AM | Swimming & Diving
The American Athletic Conference Swimming & Diving Championship
Dallas- The Rice swimming team will open its pursuit of the first American Athletic Conference championship in school history when the swimming portion of the 2023 conference championship begins on Wednesday at SMU's Robson & Lindley Aquatics Center and Barr-McMillion Natatorium. Preliminaries are at 10 a.m. Thursday through Saturday and finals begin at 5 p.m. on Wednesday and Saturday and 6 p.m. on Thursday and Friday.
Schedule of Events-
Wednesday: 200 medley & 800 freestyle relays (finals only)
Thursday: 500 freestyle, 200 IM, 50 freestyle, 200 freestyle relay
Friday: 400 IM, 100 Butterfly, 200 freestyle, 100 breaststroke, 100 backstroke, 400 medley relay.
Saturday: 1,650 freestyle, 200 backstroke, 100 freestyle, 200 breaststroke, 200 butterfly, 400 freestyle relay.
Coverage:
Live Results
ESPN+: Wednesday / Thursday / Friday / Saturday
Background- Rice is one of four Conference USA schools who are competing as affiliate members of the AAC this year (FAU, FIU & North Texas); This will be the first time Rice has competed in a conference championship against Houston, SMU East Carolina, and Tulane since the 2013 C-USA championship when the Owls captured the team title. Rice is competing against Cincinnati for the first time at a conference championship.
Champions- Rice won three Conference USA championships (2011, 2013 & 2014) and the Owls return four individual champions from last season. Arielle Hayon won the 100 & 200 fly titles last year, Zoe Spitz took the 100 back, Amelia Kane the 500 freestyle and Shannon Campbell the 1650 freestyle.
Seth Huston- "A lot of times the sport of swimming doesn't give coaches a lot of opportunity to be very strategic but when you're swimming against eight other teams, you're trying to maximize your points. We've gone through several scenarios to do that. I feel like we're ready to maximize our point opportunities. In C-USA, you could count on more final swims but the trickier part this week is you can't count on as many and you really want to look to make sure you've got your best point potential in the best races. What you do in the morning sets you up for the evening, so being great racers in the morning is key. This meet obviously is what we point to for the entire year and after going against the same five schools each year in C-USA, there is the added excitement of competing in a new conference."
Players Mentioned
