It is championship season in the pool. The No. 13 Virginia women's swimming and diving team has been training all season for the ACC Championships, a meet that will begin today in Chapel Hill, NC. The women will face the conference's top swimmers and hope to send their senior class out in style with a title that has eluded them despite the class' illustrious careers.
"I like to compare our women's team to the men's soccer team in a lot of ways," coach Mark Bernandino said. "We have a couple of the most outstanding women swimmers in not only the ACC but the nation in Cara Lane and Mirjana Bosevska, but they have not won that elusive ACC championship in their careers. It is part of the team goal to send these ladies out with a championship."
Virginia has a wealth of experience in the senior leaders. Lane, the first female swimmer in school history to win a NCAA championship, also has swum nine individual events at the ACC Championships, winning eight titles. Bosevska is coming off an outstanding personal meet last weekend against Maryland. She was named ACC swimmer of the week for a performance that included lowering her ACC-best time in the 200-meter individual medley and shaving nearly five seconds off her season-best time in a 500-meter freestyle victory. As last year's ACC swimmer of the year and MVP of the conference championship meet, Bosevska knows what it takes to win titles.
"We will have to be totally focused and intense for three days, but we're looking forward to it and we're ready for it," Bosevska said.
The efforts of Lane and Bosevska will have to be combined with that of fellow seniors Lindsay Crane, Courtney Massaro and Alison Sharp if the swimming and diving team hopes to make a statement in a field crowded with quality opponents.
"This is going to be an incredibly tight, close and competitive meet," Bernandino said. "This might be the most competitive meet from first to fourth in the team competition in five, six or seven years."
Four of the teams traveling to Chapel Hill are ranked in the top 25 in the nation, but the most daunting of those talented squads is certainly No. 11 North Carolina. The Tarheels will swim for what would be their fourth consecutive conference crown in their home pool this weekend. Virginia has finished second to Carolina in each of the last three ACC Championships, and will be out for Tobacco Road revenge, as UNC also was responsible for the Cavalier's only loss during the 2003 dual meet regular season.
"Facing [North Carolina] in their home pool will be a formidable challenge," Bernandino said. "They are an extremely talented and deep team, and they have a history of performing very well in championship meets."
Yet Bernandino, a 17-time ACC coach of the year in his 25th year with the Virginia program, thinks the greatest challenge for his team is in the heads of each individual athlete.He spoke of the importance of relaxing and maintaining focus during a grueling weekend of competition, and instructed his swimmers that preliminary morning races are not against their opponents, but against the clock.
"They have to believe," Bernandino said. "They have to know as an athlete, the hay is in the barn. There is nothing more they could have done to prepare physically, so it becomes a mental challenge. It becomes a question for each athlete of can they step up when it is their turn to race."
The Cavaliers' quest for an ACC championship will continue through Saturday, Feb. 22.
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