The psych sheets for the 2014 Women’s Big Ten Championships, which will be held from February 19th to 22nd at the University of Minnesota.
See the full psych sheets here.
See the full lineup of Division I conferences here.
These sheets aren’t perhaps as explosive as, say, the ones for the SEC Championships will be, where there’s a lot more swimmers with a lot more options for entries. The Big Ten’s top stars are sort of set in their events for the most part, at least at the top end, though there’s maybe a few nuggets we can pick out still.
Haley Lips, a sophomore at Indiana, has moved pretty far away from her butterfly roots. She only swam the 100 fly once, and the 200 fly three times, this season, but those three 200 flys came at two of Indiana’s biggest meets to date: Winter Nationals (twice) and the SMU Classic.
Instead, at Big Tens, she’ll swim the three longest freestyle races: the 200 (3rd seed – 1:45.96), the 500 (4th seed – 4:42.36), and the 1650 (6th seed – 16:18.81). The 200 fly was the only event she swam individually at the NCAA Championships last year, and she does have “B” cut already, so she could add it back if she qualifies in another race. There’s a big opportunity at Big Tens, though, as this year the Big Ten is suddenly very deep in the 200 fly, and relatively thin after Lindsay Vrooman and Kiera Janzen in the 1650 free.
Her teammate Brooklynn Snodgrass is entered only in the 100 and 200 back for Big Tens. That means that she’ll probably swim all 5 relays for the Hoosiers. From a points perspective at this meet, that’s unlikely to pay off for last year’s runner-ups, as she could probably find more points to score in another individual race than the difference she’ll make in a 5th relay. However, if the Hoosiers’ focus is on qualifying all 5 relays for NCAA’s, this was the smart move to make.
Then again, it might not matter: Indiana looks very deep this year, and if Kait Flederbach comes anywhere near challenging Ivy Martin for the sprint titles, the Hoosiers are in very good shape. Flederbach’s 3rd event will be the 200 free: a race she’s only swum once this year, but one where a best time (she’s been 1:47) could score her some points.
Speaking of which, Wisconsin star Ivy Martin will predictably race the 50 and 100 free, with the 100 fly serving as her 3rd individual entry – she’s the 10th seed in that event. Michigan’s Ali DeLoof, who has the endurance to go up to the 200 back, will instead focus on her shorter events: the 50 free, the 100 free, and the 100 back.
Those are the entries that we found that were most specifically interesting, though we’ll have a more thorough preview of exciting races early next week. Hint: Lindsay Vrooman versus Kiera Janzen in the 500 free is the can’t-miss race of this meet.
We’ve seen psych sheets for several other of the major conferences, but the Big Ten women are the first one we’ve gotten that is “cut,” in other words, where swimmers are not way over-entered in events. These lists become much more useful once they’re narrowed down, so we’ll share others as their “cut” deadlines pass in the next few days.