One meet remains for Ohio in 2017 and only four swimmers will be competing in the meet.
The U.S. Winter National Championships will take place Nov. 29 - Dec. 2. Corrin Van Lanen, Samantha Glass, Emily Zimcosky and Emilia Lahtinen will take part.
Some of the top swimmers from around the country will attend the meet and put up times that could challenge US records.
“We're going to see what they can do and expose them to that higher-level of competition,” coach Rachel Komisarz-Baugh said.
It will be a quick trip to Columbus for the four-day meet at the McCorkle Aquatic Pavilion. Komisarz-Baugh wanted as many Ohio swimmers as possible to qualify because the meet location was so close.
The qualifying times for the meet were set last year and any swim from Nov. 1, 2016, until Nov. 21, 2017, could qualify a swimmer. This time window includes the Mid-American Conference Championships in the spring and any meet the swimmers competed in over the summer, when they were not representing their school but a club swim team, and the fall.
It's not a new pool for the Bobcats. Three of them have not just competed there, but set qualifying times in that pool.
Each are coming off their best times of the season at the TYR Invitational, Nov. 17-19, with Van Lanen picking up the only first-place finish for Ohio. The team had eight top-five finishes.
Van Lanen has the best seed for the Bobcats with the eighth-fastest time in the 100-yard butterfly coming into the meet. Additionally, she qualified for the 50- and 100-yard freestyles at the MAC Championships in the spring with the 12th and 17th fastest times, respectively.
Glass will have the most events of the Bobcats attending with four. She will swim three different strokes. Glass set all her qualifying times before coming to Athens, with two at the 2017 Speedo Champions Series in Columbus. The 200-yard butterfly is Glass' best event. She will enter the meet in 13th and 28th in the 200-yard backstroke. The ability of Glass to swim every stroke at a solid level resulted in her qualifying in both the 200- and 400-yard individual medley.
Zimcosky will join Van Lanen in the 100-yard freestyle, while also competing in the 200-yard distance of the same event. She placed second in three events at the TYR Invitational. She also had three individual wins in dual-meets this season.
Emilia Lahtinen will compete in both the 100- and 200-yard breaststrokes. This season, Lahtinen has won one individual event after being the top-finishing Bobcat at the 2017 MAC Championships in the spring.
The format of this meet is like the invitational Ohio competed at two weekends ago. The heats will be in the morning and the finals at night.
