Swimming and Diving

Last weekend, Northwestern came in third place out of the five teams participating in Princeton’s annual Big Al Invitational, posting 749 points throughout the two-day event.

The other teams present at DeNunzio Pool last weekend were Duke, Lehigh, Penn State and Princeton. Princeton finished first with 897 points overall, and Duke’s 756 points barely edged out the Wildcats for second place. Penn State, NUs only Big Ten opponent in attendance, finished fourth and Lehigh finished fifth.

“I think (the Big Al Invitational) symbolizes a huge step forward for us,” senior Ryan Tate said. “Especially getting a win over Penn State, one of the first Big Ten teams we’ve beaten besides Michigan State in my four years here.”

The Cats will look to build off that performance when they host the TYR Invitational this weekend, their second home meet of the season.

NU owes a lot of its success in New Jersey last weekend to the younger members of the team. Sophomore DJ Hwang won the 1,650 with a time of 15:34.37, and freshman Andrew Zhang won the 100-meter backstroke with a time of 48.87.

These wins proved to be crucial for the Wildcats, as NU only had four first-place finishes total in the Big Al Invitational.

“We saw a pretty consistent showing from everyone,” Tate said. “The underclassmen really did pull through and it’s always fun to see those guys go fast.”

Not only did the underclassmen pull their weight in the individual races, but the top relay teams for Northwestern are composed of mostly underclassmen as well. Northwestern came in second in the 400-meter freestyle relay, and third in the 800-meter freestyle relay.

Although the freshmen led the team in the pool, they looked to the more experienced members of the team to stay focused and involved while spectating from the deck.

“Our (‘A’ relay teams) were primarily freshman with some seniors thrown in there,” Zhang said. “The seniors were leading us and keeping the energy up, and that’s really important, especially in a meet that was so grueling mentally and physically.”

The Wildcats strong performance last weekend came in spite of the taxing conditions of the meet. The Big Al Invitational was the team’s first two-day event of the year, with one session in the morning and one session at night both on Friday and Saturday.

“It was kind of meant to be a precursor, because (the Big Ten Championship) is even longer than that,” Tate said. “It’s good preparation because you have to be able to recover in between sessions and be physically ready to go multiple times a day.”

Multiple Wildcats swam in four or more events last weekend because of the two-day format, such as freshman Ryan Gridley, who swam four separate times on Saturday night, finishing in the top eight in each race. On top of the increased usage, the team swam on limited rest.

This weekend, Illinois-Chicago, Michigan State, Saint Louis, Truman State and William & Mary will all travel to Evanston to participate in the prestigious three-day TYR Invitational. The Wildcats will be better-rested for this weekend and look to continue building off of a strong start to the season.

“This is our midseason meet, so [we’ll] use this meet to measure where we’re at and to see how much faster we can get by the end of the season for [the Big Ten Championship] and [potentially the NCAA Championship],” Tate said. “So I’m expecting some fast times from basically everyone.”

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