After Saturday’s meet against Ohio State, the three seniors on the Northwestern women’s swim team will bid a bittersweet farewell to the pools at the Norris Aquatics Center.

As they compete in their final home meet, NU seniors Kristin Ward, Rachel Johnson and Carmen Cosgrove will have an emotional climax to their Wildcats careers. However, they will have to ground themselves to focus for the impending Big Ten and NCAA championships.

But for now they are enjoying “Senior Week,” in which they’re being pampered with gifts and tokens of appreciation from teammates.

“It’s our chance to kinda highlight the seniors,” NU coach Jimmy Tierney said. “They’ll get the major focus of the team this week. We’re just kinda thanking them and letting them know we appreciate all that they’ve done.”

Even though last week’s disappointing loss to No. 19 Michigan dropped the Cats to 1-4 in the Big Ten, the Buckeyes have yet to win a conference meet and are losers of four in a row.

But don’t worry about the seniors not being hyped, Tierney said.

“I don’t have any worries about them getting excited and performing at their best,” he said. “They won’t be as rested physically, but mentally they want to perform well.”

Ward has been an integral part of NU’s diving program.

As a sophomore she qualified for the NCAA diving zones in the one- and three-meter events. The NCAA diving zones are the divers’ equivalent of national championships. Unlike Big Ten championships — in which all Big Ten divers participate — only divers who acquire high enough scores during the regular season are invited to diving zones.

“I’ve definitely experienced how our team has gotten better in the diving area,” she said. “We’re doing our part more than we ever have before.”

Johnson was coming off a season in which she received an automatic bid to the NCAA championships for the 200-yard butterfly and an All-American honorable mention. She and the coaching staff set high expectations for her performance this season.

But tendinitis in her shoulder forced Johnson to cut back the events she swam. Johnson still swims on various relay teams and brought home a first-place finish against No. 24 Tennessee — all of this when she was still rehabilitating her shoulder.

“Over four years of personal experience, you learn how to be more effective,” she said before the season. “You learn how to gauge yourself and make smaller steps toward better goals.”

Cosgrove has done more for NU in two years than some swimmers can do in four. After her sophomore year, the Aussie left a defunct program at Nebraska to join the Cats.

Cosgrove is one of four NU swimmers to win Northwestern Female Athlete of the Week. She has won countless events for the Cats this season in the butterfly and swimming a leg in most of NU’s relays.

NU vs. Ohio State

1 p.m., Saturday

Norris Acquatics Center