Painter Stone – Staff Writer
With the Olympic trials close, the UW swimming and diving team members are working toward sending some athletes to the competition.
UW’s head swim coach Dave Dennison said he is confident in his swimmers and divers.
He said he plans to “start sending some people to the NCAAs” also adding that “quite a few members of the team would like to go to Olympic trials in July.”
The UW Cowboys and Cowgirls swimming and diving season starts in October and the teams are looking for a big season.
Both teams are aiming for the Mountain West Division title, as well as having the additional incentive of the Olympic trials next summer.
With the success that the University of Wyoming has been having with its athletics, the swimming and diving teams are expecting to see some individual champions as well as some top three overall finishers, he said.
Dennison said he had an aggressive approach to training the first half of the year.
“ They came in in really good shape, and hungry to have a great season, so we didn’t have to spend a lot of extra time working on building up into conditioning, they’re already in pretty good shape, and now we’re just ironing out a lot of the details,” he said.
Dennison said the swimmers that will have a standout season will be sophomore Ryan Netzel and Junior Mitchell Hovis on the men’s team.
“Those are guys who are definitely going to go to Olympic trials for us,” he said.
He said to look for sophomore Lainee Jones, junior Hannah Mclean-Leonard, junior Katelyn Blattner, and divers Karla Contreras and Melissa Mirafuentes as stand out cowgirl performers.
The University of Wyoming swim season will kick off against Northern Colorado at the Laramie high school on Sept. 20 at 4 p.m
