The Virginia men's and women's swimming and diving teams will close out their regular seasons with a final home meet against Maryland at 1 p.m. tomorrow. Both teams are looking for a strong finish for the season so they can build momentum for the upcoming ACC Championships at North Carolina later this month.
The Virginia men and women are ranked ninth and seventh in the nation respectively, and are considered to be the best teams in the ACC. But the Terps pose a difficult challenge for the Cavaliers' swimmers and divers.
"This is very likely going to be a real stiff test for us," Cav Coach Mark Bernardino said.
The Terrapins will blitz Virginia with speed, and lots of it. Juniors Drew Childs, Aaron Peterson, Greg Courtois, Katy Novotny and senior Sarah Solomon head the list of excellent Maryland sprint and butterfly swimmers on both the men's and women's teams.
"Probably of all the teams that we swim in the ACC for women, they present us with one of the most difficult match-ups in the short sprint events," Bernardino said. Maryland is "a very, very talented sprint team."
Despite possessing a plethora of strong short-distance swimmers, the Terps admit that it may take more than that to win tomorrow's meet.
"They're an exceptional team," Maryland coach Jim Wenhold said. On paper, they're a very, very, very difficult team to beat. I think this will be a good primer meet for the ACC" Championships.
On the men's side, fourth-year captains Austin Ramirez and Doak Finch, and second-year phenom Ed Moses lead a well-balanced, battle-tested team. Third-year Megan Iffland will lead the Virginia women.
"Megan Iffland [has] just had a terrific season for us," Bernardino said.
First-year women Mirjana Bosevska and Cara Lane also are expected to continue surprising everyone with their consistently excellent racing.
Bosevska and Lane "have swum faster, more consistently, on a weekly basis, than perhaps we anticipated when they signed to come to Virginia," Bernardino said.
Bernardino said he is glad to face a tough opponent leading into the ACC Championships because the highly competitive spirit should carry over into Chapel Hill.
"I'd hate to go into the Conference Championship meet off of a meet that did not have as much intensity and as many close match-ups as this one should have," he said. "This should provide for some pretty good racing"
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