The ISU swimming & diving team (2-1, 0-0 Big 12) will face off against the University of Nebraska-Omaha (0-5, 0-1 Summit) and the University of North Dakota (5-1, 2-0 Big Sky) in the final meets of its home stand to open the season Oct. 31 in Beyer Hall.

Iowa State will be facing two differently-oriented teams in its two meets this weekend. The Cyclones are taking on their first North Dakota school and second Nebraska school of the season in the meets on Oct. 31.

“UNO has a couple good sprinters and backstrokers,” said ISU assistant coach Kelly Nordell. “UND will bring more of a challenge and the battle for first place in races is going to be competitive, but as a team, we have more depth going into these meets.”

ISU coach Duane Sorenson has a similar take on the meets happening on Oct. 31.

“Omaha has two very good swimmers,” Sorenson said. “Natalie Renshaw, who we recruited really hard and then Morgan Stepp. They have a couple of good kids.”

The clearly stronger team in North Dakota, based on record alone, will be a challenging meet for Iowa State.

“UND has a very good squad,” Sorenson said. “They swam really fast a couple weeks ago against Northern Colorado and South Dakota up at their home pool, so we have to be on top of our game. They don’t have a lot of weaknesses so that should be a very good meet.”

Diving coach Jeff Warrick is also looking forward to the meet ahead, and the unique atmosphere that will be in place in Beyer Hall.

“It will be a good competition,” Warrick said. “It will be more divers than we have had, but that is a good thing. It’s going to be a little chaotic because we are going to have swimming and diving running concurrently, so they’ll have to ready for noise and guns going off and starts. It will be good distraction training for them.”

Warrick likes the mindset of his divers going into this event, and has the right mental approach and structure put in place for his team.

“We are looking forward to a good competition,” Warrick said. “We’ve had several now under our belts and each of them are supposed to individually be thinking about, ‘What am I going to do this week in meets? What did I learn from the past meets? And what am I going to do different in practices?’”

The ISU, UNO and UND swimming & diving teams will will square off at 4 p.m. on Oct. 31 in Beyer Hall.