With a five-month campaign ahead of them, the ASU swim and dive team has a chance to check their offseason progress in their first meet against UNLV at home on Saturday.
But since ASU’s most important meets are not until February at the earliest, the coaches understand that the first events are used as benchmarks.
“I’ll tell you, it’s kind of a mixed feeling right now because it is really early for us,” dive coach Mark Bradshaw said. “We’re trying to peak for February, March — the end of our collegiate season. But it is an opportunity here to compete.”
Saturday will be the first time the coaches will get a look at their handful of freshmen, including Zac Dalby from Australia.
“It’s going to be exciting,” Dalby said. “Honestly, we’re training pretty hard right now so it’s nice to see where we’re at and build on that.”
The Sun Devils are up against a UNLV team that excelled last season, notably with their men’s swim squad. In March the Rebels won their seventh consecutive Mountain West Conference Swimming and Diving Championship in the men’s division and placed 19th as a team at the NCAAs.
Returning for UNLV coming into Saturday’s meet is Honorable Mention All-Americans senior Charlie Tapp and 2010-11 MWC Swimmer of the Year junior Cody Roberts.
“The men’s side would be a bit of a challenge to us,” swim coach Dorsey Tierney-Walker said. “UNLV is very strong in the 100s and the strokes and the sprint events.”
Tierney-Walker also said that on the women’s side the Rebels have a “very good” distance swimmer in the 500- and 1000-yard Freestyle in sophomore Jessica Heim. At one point last season Heim held the all-time MWC 1650 Freestyle record with a time of 17:24:17.
“They’re probably in the same position as us at the moment in terms of hard training and stuff like that,” Dalby said. “I know a few of the freshman boys over there like Bart Wanot, and he texted me this morning saying he’s just looking forward to having some fun racing.”
As for the dive team, since the divers have been going through rigorous training lately, Bradshaw acknowledges the team won’t be competing at its peak for this first meet.
“Our preparedness to compete for this weekend — and even in the ensuing competitions for the next month — we’re not going to be that great in terms where we want to be,” Bradshaw said. “But that’s a given.”
The Rebels will send four divers to Tempe on Saturday, including junior Rachelle Zuccaro, who set a school platform record last year in the NCAA Zone E Diving Regionals.
The UNLV men’s team does not list any divers on its roster, but Bradshaw said he still wants his male divers to show up and get a first taste of competition, even if the Rebels don’t field a team.
It’s still an ideal opportunity for the Sun Devils to master the basics.
“We’re not doing the same type of dives we would do at the end of the season. We’re actually doing easier dives, to work on technique. It’s so, so early. We want to work on those bigger dives.”
Junior diver Constantin Blaha doesn’t see this first meet as different from any other.
“Every meet is an opportunity to train your attitude,” Blaha said. “It trains your dives in the meet or how you behave. There’s so many, but this is where it counts.
Reach the reporter at jnacion@asu.edu
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