The U swimming and diving team will be back in action this weekend as they host Arizona State on Friday and UNLV on Saturday at the Ute Natatorium.
Both the men’s and women’s teams will look to get back on track after being dealt losses at the hands of Denver last weekend.
The Utes will kick off the weekend Friday night at 6 p.m., the first of three home meets.
Head coach Greg Winslow, who came to Utah after four years as an assistant coach at ASU, said he is looking forward to seeing his old team.
“It will be good to see Arizona State this week,” Winslow said. “I helped recruit a lot of the athletes on the team. It will be nice to see them and see some of the coaches I worked with down there.”
After the meet with ASU, Utah will begin its conference schedule with a meet against the UNLV Rebels at 1 p.m. Saturday.
UNLV will provide tough competition for the Utes as both the men and women were selected to finish high in the MWC preseason polls. The UNLV men were the overwhelming favorites to win the title this year and the women were picked to finish second behind BYU.
Winslow said that the team will need to see a continuation of last weekend from the top performers in order to come away with a win.
“We’ll be relying on those that won last week to continue to do well,” Winslow said.
Winslow said that with such a young team the Utes will need to continue to see big performances out of the freshman class.
“We’ll be looking to the freshmen that won, particularly Ryan Hansen and Bryan Michaels, to continue to step up for us. We have only begun to see what Karson Applin can do in the pool,” Winslow said. “I was really impressed with Kristina Evans last week. We will need her to continue to compete at that level to stay with our opponents this week.”
Other big performers from last week include: John Baque, who finished first in both the 100 and 200 breast; Bjorn Gunnarsson, who finished first in the 50 free; Maiya Otsuka, who placed first in the 100 and 200 breast and Hannah Caron, who finished first in the 100 and 200 fly.
Next weekend, Utah will host the women from Boise State and New Mexico and the men’s and women’s teams from Seattle. The four-team event will begin at 1 p.m. Saturday.