Lundgaard Era Opens Friday Afternoon With Tri-Meet At University Of Miami

Friday, November 3

Coral Gables, Fla.

4:00 PM

Princeton University

Nova Southeastern

Photo by: Beverly Schaefer

Lundgaard Era Opens Friday Afternoon With Tri-Meet At University Of Miami

November 02, 2017 | Women's Swimming and Diving

New Princeton head coach Bret Lundgaard and the 2017-18 Tigers will make their season debut Friday afternoon (4 pm) in a tri-meet with Nova Southeastern and Miami in Coral Gables, Fla. While Lundgaard has been pleased with the earliest steps taken this preseason, he is excited to see how this team performs in several challenging early-season meets.

There were some names that Lundgaard wasn't nearly as familiar with as the rest of the Ivy League several months ago, but he is glad to have them as leaders in his first season taking over for the retired Susan Teeter. Among those are tri-captains Maddy Veith, Claire McIlmail, and Joanna Curry.

Veith and McIlmail bring significant experience into the season; Veith has been a three-year member of the conference team, and she earned first-team All-Ivy League honors as the anchor of the winning 200, 400 and 800 free relays to help Princeton rally for the 2015 Ivy title. McIlmail, the 2015 Ivy champion in the 200 free, has battled health issues over the last two seasons, but she is hoping to bookend her career with yet another championship performance. Curry, the lone junior tri-captain, was arguably the breakout performer of the 2016-17 season, which ended with her reaching a pair of Ivy League finals.

Senior Lindsay Temple, the 2016 Ivy League champion in the 200 back, wasn't able to get fully healthy in time to truly challenge in the postseason, so she is looking forward to getting one more shot at a big Ivy League weekend. Junior Isabel Reis had a strong debut in 2016, when she placed second in the 100 fly with the third-fastest time in Princeton history; now an upperclassman, she is hoping for an even stronger postseason performance.

While Lundgaard can take a lot of confidence from the veterans on the team, he is excited about the potential for his young swimmers. The Class of 2020 was thrust into key roles due to injuries last year, and they should grow from those experiences, while the freshman class included several highly touted recruits that Lundgaard believes has the chance to be special with a combination of hard work and health.

The Tigers will get their fair share of early tests. One week after the season opener at Miami, Princeton will head to the two-day Virginia Open. The Tigers open their Ivy League season Nov. 18 against Penn and Cornell in Philadelphia, and they will host the 2017 Big Al Open Dec. 1-3 at DeNunzio Pool. That will start a big homestand for the Tigers, who won't leave DeNunzio until the opening weekend of February, when they head to Cambridge for H-Y-P weekend.