Teams: UC Davis at UC Santa Cruz
Where: East Fieldhouse Pool – Santa Cruz, Calif.
When: Saturday at 1 p.m.
Who to watch: In his first meet after redshirting last season to focus on the U.S. Olympic Trials, junior Scott Weltz picked up the win in the 200-yard individual medley in 1:52.70 at the Pacific Invitational on Sunday.
“It’s real nice to have your best swimmer back,” men’s head coach Pete Motekaitis said. “He won a race and we’re hoping it’s just one of many to come during the year.“
A native of San Jose, Calif., Weltz also posted top-five showings in the 200 breaststroke and 100 backstroke with times of 2:06.40 and 52.40, respectively.
Did you know? Saturday’s meet against UC Santa Cruz will feature just the Aggies and Banana Slugs in a two-team dual for the first time in five seasons. San Jose State and UC San Diego previously competed in the meet.
Preview: UC Davis travels to UC Santa Cruz for its first dual meet of the season on Saturday.
Women’s head coach Barbara Jahn will put her swimmers in their best events in preparation for next Saturday’s meet at Nevada.
“We need to get ready for that meet because we’ll need to swim at our bests,” she said. “Every dual with Santa Cruz is a training session because you want to see how your team is going to swim against competition.“
Moekaitis thinks individual competition will make the men’s team stronger as a whole.
“Everyone will have something different to work on,” he said. “I think our guys will really respond to that. We’re going to select our team for the Big West Shootout, so right now you need to be practicing hard and racing hard to make the travel squad. You either do that or stay home.“
–Adam Loberstein
