Jan. 14, 2016
NOTRE DAME, Ind. – The University of Notre Dame swimming and diving teams will face Northwestern Saturday, January 16 at noon ET in their second-to-last meet of the regular season. The Irish are coming off a loss to Virginia last weekend.
“Everything points towards the ACC Championship, and getting prepped for that meet,” Irish head coach Mike Litzinger says. “Both teams are coming off a really tough 10 days of training camp where not necessarily the intensity, but the frequency of what we were doing was ramped up. It’s completely different than during the school year. Coming into Virginia, we were physically tired; now, we’re back into a more normal rotation where our focus is on speed and strategy. I expect us to be much sharper against Northwestern.”
The Irish faced Northwestern on the road last year at Michigan, in a double duel meet. The women’s team lost, 154-146, and the men’s team finished second, 173-127.
“I think Northwestern will want to come down and compete to win,” states Litzinger. “They have a new women’s coach, who is certainly a very capable and very good coach. I don’t think in recent history our women have won a meet against Northwestern. So it’s a great challenge for our women where we match up very well with them, and it’s going to be a team that comes ahead that wants to sacrifice, to grind, to really lay it out there early on. I put that challenge forth to our women, and we’ll see how they respond. On the men’s side, they have some very good athletes, so while we’re a much deeper team than they are right now, we’re still going to have to get out there and race and win some of the races to beat them.”
Live stats of the meet will be available , and the meet will be video-streamed live on WatchND.
— ND —
Lizzie Mikes serves as Media Services Coordinator at the University of Notre Dame. A 2013 graduate of Johnson & Wales University, she oversees credential management and is the athletic communications director for Fighting Irish men’s and women’s swimming and diving. She has assisted with numerous NCAA postseason events hosted by Notre Dame, and is heavily involved in the day-to-day tasks of the athletic communications office