VIDEO: Jordan Taylor Previews Tennessee Invitational
Knoxville, TN – The Carson-Newman swim team is gearing up for their mid-season event at the Tennessee Invitational from Nov.21 to Nov.23 in Knoxville, TN.
The Eagles, ranked 12th in the nation on the women's side while the men have been tabbed 17th overall, are coming off a dominant 290-78 win over Lees-McRae College in their home opener in Jefferson City, TN.
C-N has been preparing for this event since the start of the season, as it will serve as the last organized competition of the fall semester and will be used as a benchmark to see the team's progress since August.
"As far as our preparation and where we're at, the team is in a great place," Carson-Newman coach Jordan Taylor said. "Just trying to keep them grinded on, focused on what you can do. Yeah, it might be difficult to win races and stuff like that this weekend but you can get lifetime bests, you can qualify for nationals, you can really prepare going into the next section of our season."
First-place finishes may be especially challenging to secure this weekend because C-N will be going up against prominent NCAA Division I programs such as the Universities of Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia, Indiana and Denver. All of these opponents are ranked within the top-15 at the DI level while Tennessee and Indiana are both in the top-five.
"It's meant to be one of the fastest meets in the country this year," Taylor said. "We're just really excited to be a part of that and we go into it as the underdogs. We understand that we're not there to have an upset and win the meet, our goal is to race some of the fastest swimmers in the country and if not the world."
C-N will face multiple athletes that have legitimate chances at qualifying for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, Japan.
This is the third straight season that the Eagles will participate in the event.
"The first year we went there everyone was a bit like 'we don't belong, we shouldn't be here, we're going to get killed, this is too much,'" Taylor said. "Then they realized our top guys can compete and then the second year more and more of the team realized 'hey, I can make finals, I can compete at this meet.'"
More important to the team than winning the event is setting season and lifetime best times in their main events so that they can qualify for nationals as individuals and help the team's national ranking improve as well.
"We're looking to get as many people as possible to qualify to nationals." Taylor said. "We won't know who qualifies until mid-February but we know what makes the top-20 in the country over the last three years."
While the competition ends on Nov.23, several Eagles swimmers will hang around on Nov.24 while the facility at the University of Tennessee is used for time trials, giving participants the opportunity to qualify for the aforementioned 2020 Olympics.
Be sure to keep up with the C-N swim team all season on C-N's social media platforms and on cneagles.com.