The Iowa swimming & diving teams will compete today and Saturday in South Bend, Indiana, in the Shamrock Invitational. Notre Dame will host the meet, and Ohio State (men’s/women’s), Akron (women’s), and Missouri State (men’s) will also compete.

The meet will replicate a championship, running every event in fewer than two days. This meet will also be the final road competition for the men’s team until the NCAA Championships in March.

“You’re just squeezing this championship meet that is typically three and a half days into fewer than two day and three sessions,” Iowa head coach Marc Long said. “We get in a lot of racing and a lot of competing. Diving does a 1- and 3-meter both days. You have to work on recovery and preparation, because you’re just always either racing, decompressing from that race, or getting ready for another race, and there are a lot of relays. All the competition is kind of in the same boat.”

The Hawkeyes have participated in the invitational in seven of the past nine seasons. Iowa competed at the Shamrock Invitational three times in the past four years, which included a first-place finish in 2014-15. The Hawkeyes also had a second-place finish in 2015-16 and a bronze last season.

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Each Iowa swimmer has her or his individual goal going into the weekend.

“My goals are to improve myself and win,” redshirt freshman Aleksey Tarasenko said. “I’m really focused and engrossed into swimming. I just swim and swim. Both mentally and physically, I’m just really engrossed in swimming.”

Both the men and women had expected to face Notre Dame prior to this meet, but the men’s meet against Notre Dame scheduled for Jan. 12 was canceled because of an illness going around.

The Iowa women did face the No. 12 Irish and fell, 204-95, on Jan. 11 in Champaign, Illinois. 

“When we laid out the schedule, this was all part of the plan: to race a lot this time of the year and race eye-level competition.,” Long said. “It’s still a learning process to see where people are. We were off competing for such a long time, especially since we had that meet canceled for the guys. So, we’re still working a lot on that. We have these meets we stick to our training plan and in some cases, make modifications.”

There will be three sessions in the invitational. Two will be Jan. 25 beginning at 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., and the last one is on Jan. 26 starting at 10:15 a.m.

Following the Shamrock Invitational, the Hawkeyes will host Northern Iowa and Western Illinois at the Campus Recreation & Wellness Center.

Things will then speed up as the Big Ten Championships mark the beginning of the postseason Feb. 27-March 2 (men) Feb. 20-23 (women).