Each year during college basketball season, the ACC-Big Ten Challenge pits two of the most dominant conferences against one another. Since the contest's inception in 1999, the ACC has won every challenge.
The Virginia swimming and diving teams hope to continue the ACC's tradition as they head to Pennsylvania this weekend for their very own version of the Big Ten Challenge. Taking on Penn State, Michigan State and Purdue, Virginia alone will represent the ACC.
Both the men and women's teams, ranked 12th and 19th respectively, will face stiff competition. Each will take on a top 25 opponent at the quad-meet: The Purdue men are ranked 14th nationally, while the Penn State women are 17th.
"All three are very good teams, all three with different strengths and different weaknesses," Virginia coach Mark Bernardino said. "I am curious to see how the [Virginia] swimmers will react to the challenge of being the only non-Big Ten team in the pool."
To be successful this weekend, Bernardino emphasized that his youngest swimmers will have to race the way they have prepared in practice. Unlike other sports where adjusting to the other team's style and approach is critical, swimming requires blocking out your opponents. Each swimmer's individual style and stamina determines how he or she should race, for example how fast to go out off the block.
Setting individual goals before a race helps the Cavaliers maintain their concentration in the face of potentially intimidating opponents.
"I hope especially in the 1000 freestyle to go faster than I did against Florida," freshman Taylor Smith said. "But mostly to place high enough to help the team score enough points to win."
The Cavaliers approach their five-month season with one goal in mind -- the championship meets in February and March. Therefore, each regular-season meet is viewed as a stepping stone rather than an end in and of itself.
Because the timeline of Bernardino's training schedule spans the entire season, sometimes the Cavaliers are well-rested before meets and other times, they are not.
"We have been in a very heavy training cycle these last two weeks," Bernardino said. "I am curious to see how they are going to react to the challenge of competing during a heavy training cycle."
Further aiding in Virginia's preparation for championship meets is the format of this quad-meet. With 20 total events, the meet commences Friday night and resumes Saturday morning.
"I want to see how well they can swim over the course of two consecutive sessions," Bernardino said. "It kind of mirrors the preliminaries and finals for a championship meet. There you have to be able to swim fast early in the morning and come back and swim fast again at night. We are flip-flopping it in this meet where you have to swim fast at night and then come back the next morning and swim fast again in a different event."
Although they have been training quite heavily recently, both Virginia teams have had two weeks off from competitive racing. The women's team, having gone 1-2-3 in six events against their last opponent, Clemson, is eager to get back into the pool for a repeat performance.
"We are taking this on as a big meet," senior Stephanie Glover said. "Penn State is going to be our biggest competition -- they are one of the top teams in their conference. We are just trying to stay focused and we are really excited to swim some fast teams this weekend."
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