The Iowa swimming and diving team will host its second home meet of the season from Dec. 1-3 in the Hawkeye Invite at the Campus Recreation and Wellness Center.

The preliminary events will kick off at 10 a.m. each day, and the finals will begin at 5 p.m.

Iowa will welcome Nebraska, Illinois, and Rutgers’ full teams for the three-day event. Iowa State and Northern Iowa will send divers to Iowa City.

This will be the first time Iowa has hosted the Hawkeye Invitational since November 2018.

“Our expectation is to go in and compete against three other really quality Big Ten opponents,” Iowa head coach Nathan Mundt said. “We will use this as our fall peak meet, meaning we want to really have some of our best performances so far into the season at our home pool.”

This weekend will mark the first time second-year assistant coach Mona Groteguth has experienced a multi-day event in Iowa City.

“We’re really excited for the three-day event,” Groteguth said. “We have been working really hard this fall. It will be nice to see where we are at this point of the season.”

Thursday’s first day of the Hawkeye Invitational will be Iowa’s first time competing since Nov. 11, when they lost to Minnesota 218-82.

Groteguth said her team used the midseason hiatus to train and prepare for the later months of the schedule.

“We did it on purpose where we have fewer meets in the fall and more in January,” Groteguth said. “We did this just so we could have more time to train.”

In the Hawkeyes’ loss to the Gophers, Iowa sophomore and Minnesota native Alix O’Brien took home a first-place finish in the 1000-meter freestyle, touching the wall in a career-best 10:18.21.

“I was really excited because it was our first travel meet against a Big Ten opponent,” O’Brien said. “I got to see all my family in the stands. I forgot about all the scary stuff about racing and just had fun.”

Another notable finish for the Hawkeyes was from graduate student Sheridan Schreiber. The Georgia product notched a career-best time of 1:03.54 and a first-place finish in the 100-meter breast.

Even in a loss, the Hawkeyes managed to set 14 career bests in Minneapolis.

“I saw a lot of progress up in Minnesota in being able to approach our races more aggressively,” Mundt said. “It was a lot of fun seeing that progress being made. Our goal going into it was to get better from one meet to the next.”