Swimming and Diving Gets Season Underway at Home Against LSU
10/24/2003 12:00:00 AM | Swimming & Diving
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. - The Alabama swimming and diving men and women get their seasons underway Friday (October 24) at 3 p.m. against the LSU Tigers in the Alabama Aquatic Center.
The meet will be the Crimson Tide's season, home and conference opener and the first meet under first year Alabama head coach Eric McIlquham. Admission to the meet is free.
"I'm excited to get the season underway," McIlquham said. "I expect we'll learn a lot about our athletes tomorrow. It should be good meet on both sides and a great way to get things underway."
LSU has already gotten their season started, having already face Clemson and conference foe Georgia. Both the Tiger men and women come into Tuscaloosa 0-2. The Tigers are balanced between youth and experience returning 17 men and 15 women from last year's squads that finished 18th and 32nd respectively at the NCAA Championships.
Alabama on the other hand is in a different boat. While the men only have three rookies on their roster, they've also lost a number of points from last year's 12th place NCAA squad, including two-time NCAA Champion Stefan Gherghel, who exhausted his eligibility, and All-Americans Vlad Polyakov, Spiros Bitsakis and Apostolis Tsagarikis, who are redshirting this season in preparation for the 2004 Olympics.
On the women's side, the Tide is very young with 18 athletes out of 22 coming from the freshmen and sophomore classes, including 12 rookies. The women will be missing breaststroke superstar Anne Poleska, who is also taking a year off of school to train for the Olympics, but returns the core of their 15th place NCAA squad from a year ago.
