After a historic competition in the Houston Cougar Classic during fall break, Vandal swimming and diving travels to California to take on conference rival Fresno State Saturday.
Coming off the break and preparing for finals that loom in the future, Vandal coach Mark Sowa said this meet presents its own challenges for his team.
“It’s really important for us to stay focused,” Sowa said. “We talk about focusing on one swim at a time and one event at a time.”
The Bulldogs swim in an outdoor pool which will present another challenge for Idaho as it is the first outdoor pool the Vandals have competed in this season.
Idaho fell to Fresno State last year in the WAC Championships but Sowa said his team has a good chance to knock off the Bulldogs.
“If you look at the match-up, we are pretty evenly matched (with Fresno),” Sowa said. “I think we have a really good chance of being competitive.”
Fresno State sprinter Dani Yoho has been consistently in the top eight in the WAC in both the 50 and 100 free.
“We don’t give anybody a race before it’s swam,” Sowa said. “We’ll go (to Fresno) and take care of business.”
The Vandals placed seventh in the Houston Cougar Classic Invitational Nov. 17 and broke six school records in the process.
“By and large, people were swimming faster than they swam at the WAC Championship last year,” Sowa said. “We had several lifetime best times and now we’ve put ourselves in a situation where if we perform in February, we could have someone scoring in every event in the WAC Championship.”
Freshman Rachel Millet had a great day in Houston as she set school records in the 50, 100 and 200 free and 100 fly. She finished fourth in the 100 free in 50.46 seconds.
Junior diver Paige Hunt’s 199 gave her a third-place finish in her event.
Sowa thinks that his team started feeding off mutual success once individuals started doing well and relaxed.
“Success breeds success,” Sowa said. “That stuff becomes contagious.”
The Vandals will take that success to Fresno as they hope to have a strong finish in the last meet of the semester.
“Our focus is to continue to improve throughout the year,” Sowa said. “(Fresno) is our last chance to compete until the middle of January. We are going to get back to work and continue to improve.”