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.”