Swimming & Diving To Close Out Regular Season At Vanderbilt
Feb 4, 2011 | Women's Swimming and Diving
Feb. 4, 2011
NEW ORLEANS - The Tulane University women's swimming and diving team will close out the regular-season on Saturday, Feb. 5, when the Green Wave travel to Nashville, Tenn., to take on Vanderbilt at the Centennial SportsPlex. The dual-meet is slated to begin at 5 p.m.
The Green Wave enter the weekend 4-8 on the year and looking to win their first dual-meet since downing Northern Colorado, 102-59, on Jan. 8 in San Diego, Calif. Saturday's meet is also Tulane's final contest before heading to Houston for the 2010 Conference USA Women's Swimming and Diving Championship, which is scheduled to run from Feb. 23-26 at the University of Houston's Campus Recreation and Wellness Center Natatorium.
"Our goals for the weekend are to simply race...period," Tulane head swimming and diving coach Lena Guarriello said. "We've got some great match-ups in several events. Our team needs to win races and I think we're ready to do that. I'm very pleased with where we're at right now. We've had a good week of training and we're ready to close out our dual-meet season with some fast races in Nashville on Saturday."
In their last outing, Tulane posted a combined 27 Top 10 finishes in a two-day, four-team meet in Baton Rouge last Friday and Saturday at LSU. While the Green Wave dropped all three dual meets to the host Tigers along with C-USA opponents Houston and Rice, the young Tulane team continued to show steady improvement from where it was at the start of the 2010-11 season.
Saturday's meet in Nashville marks the second consecutive season that Tulane and Vanderbilt will square off in the pool. Last season, Tulane wrapped up the 2009-10 regular season with a 183-89 victory over the Commodores on Feb. 6, 2010, at the Reily Student Recreation Center Natatorium.
"Honestly, last year's meet was the best team effort that we had up to that point in the season," Guarriello said. "We started the meet strong and finished races well. Our team had a lot of fun that day and it's hard to swim slow when you're having a good time.
"I was looking at Vandy's results from last weekend earlier today. They are a much better team than they were one year ago. I think they are prepared to race for a win on Saturday."
Vanderbilt, meanwhile, enters the meet 1-6 on the year, but are coming off their first victory of the season after downing Marshall, 160-5-136.5, on Jan. 29 in Huntington, W.Va. In that contest, Erika Deardorf highlighted the Commodore effort with a school-record in the 1000 free with a time of 10:09.71.
Saturday's meet will likely be an emotional one for Vandy as the team will say goodbye to its first four-year letterwinners in senior Anna Fargo and Jennifer Molchan, who joined the program in its first varsity season back in 2006.
