The Columbia women’s swimming and diving team will be on the road this weekend to compete against Princeton. Although this is still an Ivy League matchup, both teams will be looking at this meet from a different perspective. The Lions and Tigers have started to turn their attention to the Ivy League Championships coming up at the end of the month.

Usually, when a team enters a competition, the goal is success in the game immediately at hand. Today, the Lions have their eyes on the prize at the season finale. Earlier this season, the Lions swam at the Princeton pool in the Big Al Invitational. Head coach Diana Caskey thought that the major benefit of the invitational was the fact that they would be able to swim in the pool in which the league championships will be held. This is a similar goal for today’s meet.

“Ivy Championships are in the Princeton pool in two weeks,” said Caskey, “We want to go and race well and remind ourselves of the venue we will be competing in.”

The mentality going into this meet is to get a feel for the pool while still having fast and productive swims. The ultimate goal is not necessarily to win this competition. This allows the Lions to make a few changes.

“We will likely switch up some events,” said Caskey. Princeton will also probably make a few changes but for a slightly different reason.

The Tigers are coming off of their annual H-Y-P (Harvard-Yale-Princeton) meet, a draining event because it is similar to the Ivies. This big meet will more than likely lead Princeton to make several alterations to their typical set of swimmers.

“They are coming off a big emotional weekend,“ said Caskey, “they probably do not want to expend a lot more mental energy and may not want to race their identical events to last weekend.”

This does not mean that the Tigers and Lions will not swim competitively, because, as Caskey added, there are eight swimmers on the Princeton squad who will be ending their season with a meet against Columbia. This will allow the meet to still be competitive even though neither team is necessarily focused on getting the win.
“I anticipate a positive meet experience even if we are not able to come away with a victory,” said Caskey, “Our sights are set on what we can accomplish in that pool beginning on Feb. 28 [the start the of Ivies].”

The Light Blue faces off against the Tigers tonight at 6 p.m. in Princeton, NJ.