Nov. 14, 2007

FAIRBANKS, AK - The Alaska Nanooks women's swim team is in Orange County this weekend for the 2007 UC Irvine/Nike Cup, to be held at the Belmont Plaza Olympic Pool in Long Beach, Calif., from Thursday, November 15, through Saturday, November 17.

The 2007 Nike Cup (formerly Speedo Cup, 1982-2006) will feature 23 women's teams and 17 men's teams. The women's field includes No. 14 UCLA, host UC Irvine, Brigham Young, Air Force, Rice, New Mexico, Pacific, UC San Diego (the nation's top-ranked team in the NCAA Division II), and UC Santa Cruz, the ninth ranked team in Division III.

The top eight swimmers in the preliminary morning heats qualify for the championship final in the evening. The next eight fastest swimmers out of prelims (9th through 16th) qualify for the evening consolation final. All 16 of those swimmers score team points.

The Nanooks, now in their third year since the swim program was revived after an 18-year absence, placed 15th (out of 23 teams) at last year's Speedo Cup, a huge improvement after scoring no points at the same event the previous year. Even more exciting was then-rookie Kelly Becker posting a NCAA A qualifying time in the 200 butterfly to earn an automatic trip to the NCAA championship meet: making her the first Alaska swimmer to do so in the program's third era.

"That was huge [for Becker] to be able to get that out of the way early in the season," said head coach Scott Lemley. "Then you don't have to rest for conference, you can swim through it. All the girls did their best times [at last year's meet], so this is a great meet for us to rest for."

And rest they did: Lemley filled up hot tubs on the pool deck and let the girls watch a movie for practice Monday to give them a physical and mental break.

"We do what's called a rest and shave. We cut back for three or four days and it both allows them recovery and it boosts their spirits. In my experience, if you're in a good mood you tend to perform better."

The Nanooks will also get to shave their leg and arm hair for the first time this season. "They don't shave September through November so they have all this hair so when they shave it makes their skin super sensitive to the feeling of the water. You only shave a couple times a year, this is one time and then conference or nationals would be the others. We really anticipate that everyone is going to swim well."

The psychological and physiological advantages will be key in helping the Nanooks stand the test against the solid competition they face this weekend.

"This is a much faster meet than our own conference, and our conference has the third-best D2 team in the country. [The meet] has all these really good Division I teams, but the best team that's going to be there is UCLA."

Despite facing tougher and deeper swim squads, Lemley is counting on Becker, whose showing in the 200 fly at last year's event has stood up as the team's record, to again be a threat for the Blue and Gold.

"The time she swam last year was a 2:05.78 and that would put her in the championship final [this weekend]. I think the chances are really good that she'll swim her `A' standard. She's swimming slightly faster now then she did at the same time last year so that bodes well."

In addition to Becker, Lemley expects the team to get a second "A" cut out of first-year Russian import Mariya Pavlovskaya.

"Our best-seeded girl so far is Mariya Pavlovskaya, and she is seeded 18th in the 400 IM. She already made her `B' cut and she needs to drop three more seconds for an `A' cut, so that's what we're hoping for our best swimmers: that they swim up to the competition and it allows them to achieve `A' time standards."

According to Lemley, the teams the Nanooks face this weekend are as strong as, if not stronger than, those in their own conference: the Pacific Coast Swim Coaches Conference. Alaska finished 10th at last year's conference meet.

"Since this is a tougher meet than conference, if we finished 10th at this meet, that would be good. Of course, we also want to qualify our 400 medley relay - any of the relays would be good - but if we could qualify the relay at this meet, it would allow our four swimmers to swim through the conference meet."

The 2007 UCI/Nike Cup will begin with the 200 free relay on Thursday, November 15, followed by the 500 free, 200 IM, 50 free and 400 medley relay on day one. The 200 medley relay, 400 IM, 100 fly, 200 free, 100 breast, 100 back and 800 free relay will all be contested on day two on Friday. The meet will conclude on Saturday with the 1650 free, 200 back, 100 free, 200 breast, 200 fly and 400 free relay, for a total of 13 individual and five relay events. Preliminaries begin at 11:30 a.m. for the women all three days, with finals starting at 6:00 p.m.

For more information please visit, www.ucirvinesports.com.