A three-day championship-style meet brings added challenge to the ISU swimming team as it travels to the Kansas Invitational this weekend in Topeka, Kan.

The Kansas Invitational will be a three-day meet and will include six different teams. Notre Dame, which is competing at this meet, is ranked among the top 20 swimming teams in the nation.

“It’s going to be great competition with Notre Dame, Kansas, Nebraska, Rice, and Nebraska-Omaha has some really good swimmers too,” said coach Duane Sorenson. “It will be really good to see what we can do over a three-day meet and just see how tough we are swimming prelims of finals three days in a row.”

The meet will be good preparation because of its championship style — a format used in championship meets — and because of the steep level of competition that is present.

The added length of the meet will also help prepare swimmers for the championships. An average meet takes place for only a small part of a day and only has a single team present, so this meet much more closely represents what it will be like towards the end of the season.

Assistant coach Kelly Nordell said this is likely one of the biggest challenges in the near future that the team will face and attested to how exhausting a meet of this caliber can be.

“I feel really good about [the meet in Kansas], I am really looking forward to it. I know the athletes are really looking forward to it,” Nordell said. “They’re going to have to get up and race feeling tired and a little beat up, but I know they’re looking forward to it as well.”

Bre Loeschke, who races in the backstroke and individual medley, said that she and the team are excited. As long as they can stay strong and focused throughout the long meet, she is confident in their abilities to swim well.

“It’s going to be a good meet for like everyone on the team — a good time to get up and race,” Loeschke said. ”[The biggest challenge will be] getting up there and staying focused, keeping going […] because you get really tired in long meets, and just keeping it together.”