On the eve of the Thanksgiving recess, the men’s and women’s swimming & diving teams welcomes in a host of schools, including TCU, FIU (women), Wyoming, SIU, D-2 McKendree, and Missouri S&T (men) to the chlorinated
air of Mizzou Aquatic Center for the team’s annual Mizzou Invite for a three-day prelim/final affair.
The focus for the Tigers, as head coach Andrew Grevers told the media at the winter sports media day on Wednesday afternoon, is trying to punch some tickets to NCAAs and set themselves up for a great rest of the season.
Shifting Priorities
“It’s been a great year,” Grevers said. “We went through a lot of changes with new roster limits, so as a program, we’ve made some adjustments there. One of the priorities I had as head coach is, how do we turn this into a positive for our program? How do we make the most of this opportunity? How do we get an advantage here and with the new numbers and the new balance in the program?”
On the women’s side, with the roster limit at 30, there’s really been no issue. “You can really accommodate all your needs, top to bottom, sprint to distance, IM, all four strokes and diving included. Not much of a sacrifice there.” However, on the men’s side, that’s where it gets a bit more dicey, with their limit only 22. “We’re feeling the pinch a bit,” he said, talking about how they don’t have a lot of distance depth or as much breaststroke depth they’ve had in the past. “The reality is, we’re not gonna be able to have as much depth as we’ve had in the past, and we’ll just maximize what we’re doing with the athletes we have to cover that area.”
The men and women are practicing together every practice for the first time in Grevers’ five years at the helm of this Mizzou program. “That has led to some of the greatest practices I’ve ever seen as a coach,” he said. “The training has been phenomenal. I have seen things in our pool in the past three months that I haven’t seen in my life.” This is objectively a crazy statement to make, as Grevers, famously the brother of former world record holder and Olympic gold medalist Matt Grevers, has seen some things in his 20+ years in coaching. Worked with Olympians, record holders. But he’s delighted with what he’s seen thus far, it seems like. He talked so animatedly about this I couldn’t help but grin.
“We are seeing incredible things here at Mizzou, right here, right now.” So for a smaller program, they’re trying to figure out where they want their focal points to be. What is the final goal?
Though perhaps unconventional, the team will be focusing on NCAAs, and I get it; I do. This conference is insanely good; we’re talking long course American and World Record holders competing in the SEC. Did they officially recognize short course world records, there’d be some title holders here, right in the water next to them.
“We’d love to win [SECs], but we’re just not in that position right now. So right now, let’s acknowledge where we’re at and maximize what we can do as a program.”
That focus became clear. “NCAAs is the mark.”
Grevers went on to describe how conversations surrounding this actually started last spring, and how they’re going to shave and taper so they will be fresh for NCAAs. “A lot of our SEC competitors are going all in there (at SECs), and then sometimes fall a little more flat at NCAAs. We may lose out to several teams that we can beat to get to the meet that matters most, which is the NCAA Championships.”
With that ultimate goal in mind, the focus this weekend is simple. It’s a dress rehearsal for championship meets.
“We’re looking to set school records this week. We’re looking to punch tickets to NCAAs and start to show where we can be for that end of season championships. If we can get those ducks in a row, so to speak, if we can start to come together and see that we’ve punched some tickets, then we get to be very proactive in how we approach the end of the season.”
For those not familiar with training for swimming, I’ll enlighten you a bit. In order for it to pay off and get a really good, impactful taper, which will then, in turn, lead to incredible swims, you have to have “enough money in the bank,” so to speak. If you don’t do the training to get to that point, it will not be an effective taper and you will likely not see the results at the end.
Grevers described it as having enough hard work in their back pockets to rest up and come down for this weekend. “So the coaches were very intentional about how hard we came out swinging, right? And the athletes can attest to that. Paige (Striley) can tell you, we worked really hard early. We spend our first six weeks in long course (50m Olympic size pool)… Yards is a lot more turns, a lot more technical details. Long course is much more about fitness, fueling your water, reinforcing good technique and good habits… We were fortunate enough to really plan out our season well in advance to start making deposits in late August, all September, early October and then start to, you know, slide over to some more short course swimming in preparation for the Mizzou Invite.”
The Diving Well
While diving is hosting as part of this meet, their big meet was last weekend at Georgia Tech, which will also host the national championships. “We did have a big competition last week, but we’re also coming into this week as looking at another way to qualify for NCAAs,” assistant coach Kyle Bogner said. “For NCAAs, you have a conference in those zones, and that’s how you get to NCAAs. So it’s very, kind of repetitive, what we’re doing in the spring in order to get to NCAAs. We’re treating it [this meet] with the same intensity that we would treat a midseason meet.”
On the team’s performance at GT, Bogner said, “I think that we’re tracking really well for the end of the season. We had a lot of opportunities to practice new dives in competition. So usually in the summer, you kind of train and learn new dives, and then you’re trying them out in the beginning of the season and seeing how they work. Overall, I think it’s really positive and trending in a good direction… Super productive.”
The team’s diving roster is larger this year than in years past, and I wondered if this could be an “in” for how to score points. Bogner said, “It’s making sure we have the right people on the team and people who are going to be able to make it and score points at NCAAs.” They’ve had lots of conversations about what this looks like and who they need on the team.
“Several teams in the SEC want to prioritize swimming over diving, so I consider that an opportunity, right? There’s going to open that door for us. We’re going to step right in and get those points.” I brought up the addition of said SEC diver, one Tanner Braunton, who arrived from the University of Texas as a three-event NCAA Qualifier (1m, 3m, platform), 2024 Big 12 Platform Diving champion, 7th place finisher at the USA Diving Winter Nationals, and 16th place finisher (All-America honorable mention) at the 2025 NCAAs.
Stay tuned to Rock M Nation for my updates throughout the weekend from the Mizzou Invitational, and if you’re in Columbia, head over to MizzouRec and check it out. Prelims are 9:30am Thursday-Saturday and Finals are at 5:30pm. The meet will also be streamed on SEC Network+.
