- Women's NCAA Swimming & Diving Championships Notes/Guide(.PDF)
- Minnesota's NCAA Championships Page
| Kaitlin O'Brien will look to repeat her All-American performance from last year in the 400 IM. |
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa.; March 7, 2007 - Ten members of the women's swimming team will head to Minneapolis, Minn. for the second time in as many months for the NCAA Women's Swimming & Diving Championships this weekend, which will be hosted by Minnesota, which also hosted Big Ten's last month. The NCAA meet runs from Thursday-Saturday, March 8-10.
The 10 NCAA qualifiers are just one fewer than the 11 that qualified last year. One Nittany Lion will be making her third appearance at the NCAA meet while six, three of which are sophomores, will be making their second appearances. Three freshmen will also join the contingent. Penn State??s 10 qualifiers are tied for the 10th most out of the 56 total teams that will send at least one swimmer to the championships. The Nittany Lions also tied for the most swimmers of any Big Ten school along with Minnesota, which also had ten swimmers qualify.
Penn State will have two divers on "stand-by" as both Courtney Adlam and Kimberlee Peifer will be the first alternates from Zone A in their respective events, Adlam in the three-meter and Peifer on the one-meter.
| Kailey Morris is one of three freshmen that will be making the trip to NCAAs. |
Four of the 10 swimmers qualified with an NCAA ??A?? automatic qualifying time. Both Kelly Nelson and Karie Haglund swam ??A?? times in the 200 butterfly, Nikki Collins posted an ??A?? time in the 1650 free and Kaitlin O??Brien made an ??A?? in the 400 IM. The other six swimmers also qualified with ??B?? provisional times. Both Collins and O??Brien were All-Americans last year. The top eight finishers in each event are named All-Americans while finishers nine through 16 are named honorable mention All-Americans.
This year will mark the fourth straight year that Penn State has had at least 10 swimmers qualify for the NCAA championships and the fifth year in the last six. The 10 qualifiers also now gives the Nittany Lion women 83 NCAA qualifiers under head coach Bill Dorenkott since his first year as head coach in 1998-99.
Penn State NCAA Qualifiers (career appearances at NCAAs)
Jessica Barnes (2)
Nikki Collins (3)
Molly Crispell (2)
Karie Haglund (2)
Claire Hawley (2)
Kailey Morris (1)
Kelly Nelson (2)
Kaitlin O??Brien (2)
Daphne Skelos (1)
Lyndsey Smith (1)
Most NCAA Qualifiers - Swimmers Only
Auburn ?C 20
Arizona ?C 19
Stanford ?C 16
California ?C 15
Florida ?C 14
Southern California ?C 12
Texas A&M ?C 12
Georgia ?C 11
SMU ?C 11
Penn State ?C 10
Texas ?C 10
Minnesota - 10