Center to host inaugural
meets
 By
Doug Healey
Assistant Sports Editor
The Purdue men's and women's swimming and diving
teams will hold their first competitions of the season and their inaugural
meets at the Purdue Aquatics Center.
At noon on Saturday in the Boilermaker Aquatics
Center, the Boilers host the Indiana Intercollegiates meet.
The center, which replaced the six-lane, 25-yard
historic Lambert Pool, contains the Doris Z. Holloway Pool and a 17-foot
deep diving well. The Holloway Pool holds approximately 800,000 gallons
of water and is an eight-lane, 50-meter competition pool, but it can
be converted into 20, 25-meter lanes. The diving well can also convert
to six 20-yard lanes, which gives the pool 26 total lanes of swimming
area.
"It seems like such a big difference from last
year and we're excited about it," said Gui Rego, a junior breaststroker.
"It's a really big center, a better environment, and you can fit a lot
more people in it.
"The center makes us feel like it's a big meet
already, and it's great teaching-wise also because it's so much bigger."
Not only is the pool big, it also has the biggest
logo in the nation at the bottom of it. There's a gold "P" outlined
in black that is tiled at the bottom of the pool.
Participating in the Indiana Intercollegiate meet
along with the Boilers are Ball State, IUPUI, Valparaiso and Vincennes.
Rego said it's hard to predict how each team will
fare in the meet.
"We don’t know what to expect from the other
teams because it's early in the season," he said. "But our expectation
is to win."
Although it's hard to say how the Boilers will
do, Rego said the team is optimistic.
"We're excited about the whole season," he said.
"We have trained hard, and the pool has allowed us to put more people
in the pool to train at the same time."
But he said one thing's for sure.
"The team is very united," said Rego. "We've been
together for six weeks of practice, and we have a lot of depth and are
a very versatile team."
The Boilers will have an intrasquad meet at 6 p.m.
today in the aquatics center to prepare for the meet.
Although this is the first official meet in the
pool, Purdue will hold an official dedication ceremony Oct. 26, the
evening before the Purdue football team's 11:10 a.m. Homecoming game
against Northwestern in Ross-Ade Stadium.
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