Penn State Announces 2016-2017 Schedule

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – The 2016-17 Penn State men’s and women’s swimming & diving schedule will pit the Nittany Lions against the nation’s elite competition and feature four events in McCoy Natatorium. The Lions will begin competition Thursday, Oct. 6, by hosting Towson.

In total, Penn State will have four full-team competition weekends during the fall semester and three regular season meets during the spring semester before post-season competition begins. The opener against Towson will be the lone home meet in the fall, but the Lions will host their first two meets in 2017, continuing series with Yale and Rutgers (Jan. 13-14) and Navy (Jan. 21).

Penn State is mostly renewing traditional matches, as Virginia Tech (Oct. 14-15) and Virginia and Michigan (Nov. 4-5), remain in the first half schedule. Michigan swept the Big Ten Championships in 2016, while the Virginia women won the ACC title, so the meet in Charlottesville will be one of the most competitive for the Nittany Lions.

“That kind of puts you in the thick of things real quick,” said Penn State head coach Tim Murphy. “It gives you some immediate perspective on what the end of the season is going to look like from both a conference standpoint and from an NCAA standpoint.”

One change to the schedule is the addition of the Ohio State Invitational (Nov. 18-20) in lieu of the Georgia and Princeton meets held the first weekend of December. The Ohio State meet is the week before Thanksgiving and will tweak the Lions’ training plans over the second half of the season.

“It will actually give us a little earlier start for the back half of the season, so we’re kind of changing up our seasonal format and the way we’re planning out the work we’re going to be doing,” said Murphy. “Just a little different angle that moves things up a couple of weeks. Not a big change, but enough it’ll make the back half of the season little bit more interesting for us.”

Following exams and the annual winter training trip in Florida, the Nittany Lions will return to competition with its two home meets and honor their seniors prior to the home finale against Navy (Jan. 21.) Penn State will also host a diving invite the following weekend (Jan. 28-29). The regular season will conclude Friday, Feb. 3 at Villanova.

The women’s team will be the first to compete in the conference championships as Purdue will host the Big Ten meet Feb. 15-18 in West Lafayette, Indiana. The men will return to Columbus, Ohio, where Ohio State will host their Big Ten Championships Feb. 22-25. Additionally, the Lion divers will look to punch their tickets to the NCAA Championships at the Zone ‘A’ Regional meet Mar. 6-8 at a site to be determined.

The NCAA Championships will be hosted by IUPUI in the Indiana University Natatorium in Indianapolis. The women’s championship will take place Mar. 16-18, while the men’s will take place Mar. 23-25.

The women’s team is returning NCAA qualifiers Katelyn Sowinski, Casey Francis, Niki Price, Katie Saloky and Megan Wujciak. The men’s team returns the NCAA qualifying, sophomore diving duo of Hector Garcia and Jack Crow, while recent Olympian and former NCAA medalist Shane Ryan returns for his senior year after redshirting during the 2015-16 season.

Check GoPSUSports.com for coverage of the Penn State swimming and diving teams during the 2016-17 season. Follow the team on Twitter at @PennStateSWIM and on Facebook at http://facebook.com/pennstateswimminganddiving.

Penn State contributed this report.

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