Water Rams head to Texas
The CSU Swimming and Diving team will look to continue its
winning ways, traveling south to Houston, Texas, to compete in the
Rice Invitational.
In last week’s Early Bird Invitational, the Rams dominated the
competition by not only taking first, but by annihilating the
opposition with Denver being the closest opponent at 338.5 points
behind the Rams.
However, this weekend may prove to be more difficult for the
Rams as they will be facing new opponents Rice, Nebraska and Texas
Christian.
“I think that TCU (will be a challenge), because they are coming
to our conference next year and because this is their first time
they are competing against a Mountain West Conference team,” said
head coach John Mattos. “They will want to send a statement.”
The swimmers and divers have been practicing since August and
are ready to jump into the meet schedule.
“All three teams, Rice, Nebraska, and Texas Christian will be
challenging. We just want to go out there, have a good time and
keep abreast of them,” Mattos said.
Yet, what may make or break this invitational for the Rams is
not their competition, but the Rams themselves with an abundance of
freshmen and a shortage of veteran talent. On the Rams roster,
there are only 13 veterans on a team of 38 athletes.�
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“I think the freshmen are definitely ahead of where I
anticipated them to be and some may be a little behind that, but
not far,” Mattos said. “But these freshmen need to step up and
carry a certain amount of the load,”
More importantly the Rams, regardless of experience, have been
training hard in preparation for the season.
“They have been going double sessions Mondays, Wednesdays and
Fridays. They would put in 6 to 8,000 yards on Saturday and on
Tuesday and Thursday they have been lifting very rigorously in the
mornings and in the afternoons,” Mattos said. “They would put in
anywhere from 6,000-8,000 yards. This has been going on for the
last two months.”
After all the training, fatigue was felt by the athletes at the
end of the Early Bird Invitational.
“Usually the Early Invitational is a pretty hard meet,” said
freestyle swimmer Tiffany Thompson. “We are just so broken down
because we train hard from the beginning of the season on.”
Going into the second meet of the season, Mattos has a simple
philosophy for the team.
“Swim fast and have fun,” Mattos said. “This is a chance for our
team to come together and experience time on the road together and
we hope that they will be able to rise to the challenge and do well
whether we finish first or fourth.”
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