Swimming and Diving

Northwestern (0-1) will have its hands full this weekend with meets against No. 8 Georgia and Georgia Tech.

The Wildcats lost last week’s meet to Eastern Michigan and will look for redemption as they compete against teams from the Peach State on Friday and Saturday. Freshman DJ Hwang said the home opener against the Bulldogs will be a tough test for NU.

“They are a top team in the nation, so it will be a challenging meet,” Hwang said.

Saturday’s meet may prove to be the easier of the two, as Georgia Tech remains unranked.

Hwang led the sweep in 1,000-yard freestyle last Wednesday against the Eagles, placing first with freshman Jeffrey Durmer and senior Jonathan Blansfield following behind. Despite his victory, Hwang said he wants to improve on his performance in the distance event.

He said his strategy will be to take the race out fast and keep up with the other swimmers.

“Last week, I know there’s a couple things that went wrong in my view,” Hwang said. “I lost speed in the last 500 of the race. I need to work on getting my speed up this time.”

The distance team dominated the 500 free as well. Freshman Liam Gately secured first in the event in 4:36.75. Hwang grabbed second place with 4:38.62, and Blansfield tied for third.

In total, the distance swimmers earned 31.5 points for the Cats, and Hwang said they will attempt to achieve that success again this weekend.

“It will be hard because of the tough competition, but we will try to have some more good races,” Hwang said.

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