The ISU swimming and diving teams are looking to regroup after a lack of mental focus stalled them in the first half of their meet with Minnesota last Saturday. The team is preparing for its meet this Saturday with the University of Nebraska-Omaha.  

“They’ve got some good depth and a couple of outstanding individuals,” said coach Duane Sorenson. “We’ve got to be on top of our game and not look past them.”

The team met Monday before practice to talk about why they weren’t ready to compete and what their mindset was compared to what it should be on the day of a meet.  

“We’ll have a much better plan going into the meet and being prepared to race,” Sorenson said.

The Cyclones also have to make the meets just an extension of their training, Sorenson said. The distance and difficulty of each race doesn’t change whether there are just Cyclones in the pool or an opponent enters the water.

“We can’t make the meets bigger than what they are,” Sorenson said.  

Sorenson wants his swimmers to approach meets with good intensity, but not to analyze the meet too much, or what the team calls “getting paralysis by analysis.”

Nebraska-Omaha will not have a diving team with them when they come to Ames, so Saturday will serve as another intrasquad meet for ISU divers. ISU diving coach Jeff Warrick said practice will change due to the format of the meet.  

“We’ll focus on some of the longer-term dives that they aren’t going to compete in right away,” Warrick said.  

After the Minnesota meet, the diving team is focusing in on making changes.  

“I said, ‘If you hear me telling you the same thing repeatedly, then you’re not doing a good job of making changes,'” Warrick said. “Sometimes that can be real hard.”

Warrick said one aspect some of the divers will focus on is balks — when a diver starts to walk down the board and gets to the end and does not dive. Some divers have struggled with balks in practice and meet warm-ups Warrick said.  

“I saw way too much of that,” Warrick said.  

The diving team is looking for some members to step up Saturday. One of those individuals is senior Abby Christensen.

“I’m looking for real good things out of Abby,” Warrick said.  “She didn’t have a terrible meet last weekend, but I know that’s not her best.”

Warrick said he has already seen improvements out of Christensen following practice Monday.  

Teams use their meets to help them train for their conference meets at the end of the season. With that in mind, fans will see a different type of meet Saturday.  

The meet will be an 11-event meet with more heats in the 50-meter freestyle, 100 free, and the 200 free in order to help Nebraska-Omaha get their swimmers more experience in freestyle races. The 200 butterfly, 200 backstroke and 200 breaststroke will only run one heat each.

The meet against Nebraska-Omaha is at 1 p.m. Saturday in Beyer Hall. Admission is free.