Meet of the Week Preview: Baldwin-Wallace at Wheeling Jesuit

By Jason Marsteller

PHOENIX, Arizona, October 14. THIS weekend, we feature three dual meets in the SwimmingWorldMagazine.com Meet of the Week series, one of which is a season-opener for Division III Baldwin-Wallace and Wheeling Jesuit.

Here is a quick preview of the match-up:

Date and Time: Friday, October 17 at 5 p.m. EST
Location: Wheeling, West Virginia

Baldwin-Wallace's Last Time Out:
This is the first meet of the season for Baldwin-Wallace.

Looking forward with Baldwin-Wallace's head coach Sara Gildea:
We are excited to begin our season. Our young men and women have worked extremely hard in the preseason to be ready to compete. We also look forward to facing Wheeling Jesuit.

Our swim team is led by two-time Division III All-American diver Todd Richert, who had an outstanding freshman year. Our seniors have done a great job of being team leaders and we hope that the enthusiasm is contagious.

The dual meet at Wheeling Jesuit also gives us an opportunity to compete prior to us hosting the annual Ohio Athletic Conference Relay Meet the next day in Berea. As always, our main focus is on winning the OAC titles for men and women and qualifying individuals to the NCAA Division III National Championship Meet, but it all begins with the meet at Wheeling Jesuit.

Wheeling Jesuit's Last Time Out:
This is the first meet of the season for Wheeling Jesuit.

Looking forward with Wheeling Jesuit's head coach Rick West:
We are extremely excited to open up with Baldwin-Wallace this week. Coach Gildea has done an excellent job at putting together a quality team from the Ohio Athletic Conference. They are a deep squad on both the men's and women's side and are solid in every event. To my knowledge this will be the first time in either of the schools history that they will be competing against one another.

Here at Jesuit we are looking to build back to greatness. Upon my return to the university in July of 2007, I found a total of two students returning to the team, one male and one female. This season, thanks to a very supportive athletic department and forward-thinking administration, we have rapidly built the team to 25 swimmers. We are looking to build the squads to 22 men and 22 women in the coming years. The exciting and scary part of this season is that of our 25 members, 17 are freshman. So far this season, we have held an alumni meet and time trials, our kids have had great swims to date, but we are looking to really be tested against BW. I think that this meet will be a great place to evaluate our work completed so far and guide us in the direction we need to proceed.

MOTW, Baldwin Wallace at Wheeling Jesuit

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