UMass women’s swimming and diving head coach Bob Newcomb announced today the program’s 2015-16 schedule as the veteran Minutewomen look to continue building momentum following last year’s runner-up finish at the Atlantic 10 Championships.
The season will begin on Oct. 9-10 at the Colgate Invitational and is also highlighted by a trio of home meets at the Joseph R. Rogers Pool in Boyden Gymnasium.
The three home meets will be against Boston University on Saturday, Oct. 24 (1 PM), Rhode Island on Friday and Saturday, Jan. 9-10 (TBA) and Fordham on Saturday, Jan. 30 (1 PM) which will also be Senior Day.
UMass will compete in six dual meets this year including three on the road at Army (Oct. 16), at Brown (Nov. 14), and at Bryant (Jan. 16).
Along with the Colgate Invitational, the Minutewomen will also compete in multi-team events at the Boston University Terrier Invitational (Nov. 20-22), the Dartmouth Invitational (Jan. 22-23) and the UConn Invitational (Feb. 6).
Diving head coach Mandy Hixon has also slated several top-flight events to challenge one of the Atlantic 10’s top squads. The divers will compete at UConn on Nov. 7 and will take part in the Tennessee Invitational on Nov. 20-22 in Knoxville, Tenn.
The Atlantic 10 Championships (Feb. 17-20) will be hosted in Geneva, Ohio at the SPIRE Institute which is one of the top natatoriums for collegiate competition. The NCAA Zone A Diving Meet will be hosted from March 8-10 in Annapolis, Md., where the top rated divers will then qualify for the NCAA Championships.
Newcomb returns a heavily veteran line-up for 2015-16 with a total of 17 uppderclassmen including 10 seniors. UMass’ second-place finish at the 2015 Atlantic 10 Championships was by a narrow 88 points to Richmond marking the closes finish for the league title since 2009-10 when 80 point separated Fordham and the Spiders.
