The Iowa women’s swimming and diving team will host the Hawkeye Invitational on Friday, Saturday, and Dec. 8 in the Campus Recreation & Wellness Center. The preliminary races for each day will begin at 10 a.m., and the finals will be 6 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 4 p.m. Dec. 8.

The meet will feature swimming and diving teams from Boise State, Denver, Milwaukee, Nebraska, Notre Dame, and Washington State with Iowa State participating only in the diving events.

“It’s a great set of teams coming in,” head coach Marc Long said. “It’s nice we get to see teams outside of our region, and it gets everyone excited to face people they haven’t faced before.”

The Hawks come into the meet with a 4-2 record, but have yet to compete in a championship-format meet this season. This will be there only chance to compete in this type of meet before they head to the Big Ten championships in late February.

“You train a long time before you get to a meet with a championship style format, so it’s a great opportunity for them, freshmen especially, to be in a championship environment,” Long said.

For many swimmers, this meet is a place to see how they stack up against other top swimmers from across the country.

“This is our second-fastest meet compared to conference. It’s a good place to see where we are and see what we need to change,” senior Lindsay Seemann said. “I think this meet is a really, really good checkpoint.”

Bcause it is a three-day meet, the swimmers have plenty of chances to score points, but it remains a long weekend for everyone involved.

“You have to have a lot of focus in this meet because you’re swimming twice a day. There’s a lot more emphasis on each meet,” Seemann said. “Personally, I just focus on one thing at a time, and it all comes together at the end.”

On the divers’ side of things, this will be the only time before the Big Ten meet that the divers on the team will be able to participate in tower diving. The several-story-high platforms will be in full use over the weekend and promises to be one of the most exciting events of the meet.

“It’s critical, getting to do this at this meet. There aren’t a lot of opportunities to do this, so this meet becomes very important,” diving coach Todd Waikel said.

In addition, that it is at home and the team is familiar with the pool is also important for the entire team.

“This really is the time of the year that a lot of teams travel, and it’s nice to stay home and play host,” Waikel said. “It’s always nice to stay home.”

For the Hawks, the goal is to improve upon the third-place finish that they got last year.

“These teams aren’t traveling all the way out here to get in the water and get wet, they are here to compete and swim fast and want to win,” Long said. “It’s going to be a great learning experience for our young group, and we expect them to compete.”