The Iowa State Swimming and Diving team will find out what it is made of as it travels to Missouri to compete in the Big 12 Championship Meet Wednesday.

The season started out promising, with the team putting together a string of wins, and got a little rocky down the stretch as they lost all three of the conference meets they competed in.

The Cyclones finished the season 6-5 and are looking to put together a good team performance.

This meet means a lot for the team because they have been preparing for it all season long.

“This is what we base our whole season on and it is really important to post tremendous times,” head coach Duane Sorenson said.

Real preparation for this meet kicked in to full swing when the team took its training trip during winter break to Costa Rica.

The whole emphasis of the trip was to train and prepare for the rest of the season, but most importantly, to peak just in time for the big conference meet — and Sorenson thinks that the team is just now peaking.

The team has had ever since its last meet on February 6th, a 182-113 loss at Kansas, to practice and get ready for the biggest meet of the year.

“The past couple weeks we’ve been working really hard on getting the technical things down like turns, dives, relay starts, and little things in our strokes to try and make it all perfect,” said sophomore swimmer Jeli Nixt.

Not only have the Cyclones been working on the physical aspects of swimming, they have focused on the mental aspects they hope will help them succeed.

“As a team, we have done a lot of work of trying to be supportive of each other just being up there and cheering on our teammates,” said senior Marni Benson. “I think that those things are really going to stand out at Conference.”

Coach Sorenson has seen a much-improved team from last season, when they got fifth place out of six Big 12 schools with a women’s swim team, in the way that they prepare for meets.

“We have been much more consistent in training and we look much better in practice compared to last year,” Sorenson said.

Because it is such a big meet, the Big 12 Championship will spread out over four days. This can get one’s excitement up and that is the case for the Iowa State swim team.

“We might have to be held down to keep it all in, because all of us get so excited for Conference,” said junior Abby Glaser.

Last season, the Cyclones barely edged out Nebraska for fifth place at the conference meet, but a new season brings new expectations for this big meet. “We are way ahead of where we were last year at this time with the times and how the training is going,” Sorenson said. “Hopefully we can match what we did there last season.”

Sorenson also has high hopes for several swimmers in particular — Nixt and Benson, who both made the finals in last seasons conference meet, Abby Glaser, who made the finals in the 100 freestyle, Lindsay Wegner, with the 200 yard backstroke, and Frances Calzada, who didn’t make finals last year but whom Sorenson expects to this year.

The Big 12 is a conference that boasts a few really good teams and the competition is going to be rather hard for Iowa State.

Texas has been ranked in the top 5 all year long and has a freshman, Kathleen Hersey, who has been named national swimmer of the week twice, and was a finalist in the Olympics this past summer in Beijing.

The Big 12 Championship starts on Wednesday and continues all the way until Saturday. On Sunday, Iowa Sate swims in the “Last Chance” meet to qualify for NCAA Nationals.