JEFFERSON CITY, Tenn. – The Carson-Newman swim team will head to the Bluegrass Mountain Conference Championships in Charlotte, North Carolina from Feb. 13 to Feb. 16 looking for a repeat performance of last year's stellar showing. The team hopes the four-day event will springboard certain Eagles to the NCAA Swimming and Diving National Championships in March.
C-N, ranked 15th on both the men's and women's sides, hasn't swam in an official event since its tri-meet with Emannuel and SCAD on Jan 18. SCAD is a conference rival that the Eagles will be facing at the event.
"Since then we've just been easing back on everything, cutting back on some of our lifting and some of our land-based workouts," Carson-Newman coach Jordan Taylor said. "We've cut back on some of our morning workouts too. We've just been trying to make things a little bit easier overall, really resting the team.
C-N has had athletes swim multiple practice races against one another to maintain sharpness and a race-mindset.
The event will boast preliminary rounds in the morning which will serve to extract qualifiers for the evening on all four days.
Swimmers have to finish in the top-16 in their event to make it to either the 'A' or 'B' final events which consist of eight swimmers each. The 'A' final contains the top-eight and the 'B' final is raced amongst the bottom-eight. Swimmers can only score points for their team if they make it into one of these two groups in the final rounds.
Finishing within the top-6 in the 'A' final is rewarded with an All-Conference honor, signified with a medal.
When it comes to relay races, teams must finish within the top-three in the finals to be named All-Conference which is also represented by a medal.
"We're going to make sure our guys are swimming fast in the morning to make it into the appropriate finals," Taylor said. "We should have a lot of our team make the finals this year because we've been very strong."
C-N has been preparing its race acumen for Conference and National Championships all season long. Race victories, season-best and lifetime-best race times have built up the team's skill and rank to best prepare for a strong postseason run.
"I've been telling them they belong here," Taylor said. "It's not above their abilities to make it to the finals. We've raced Division I schools, we swam at the Tennessee Invitational and made finals there. This meet is not as fast at Tennessee Invite so we've got nothing to be scared of."
Taylor has been preaching the importance of focus in combating the pressure-filled environment of the Conference Championships.
"If you can put forth the best performance from yourself that puts you in the best position to make finals, that's how you win," Taylor said. "If you focus on other people too much, you start to play their game and you start to fall into their hands and it takes away from you. We can only control ourselves. We can control our turns, our starts and our races and I want to make sure we are executing the way we want to execute our races."
Last year, the team finished in third-place on both sides and earned 38 All-BMC plaudits over the four days. Those performances launched a program-record nine athletes to the NCAA National Championships.
Be sure to keep up with the Carson-Newman swim team all across C-N's social media platforms and on cneagles.com.
