Daily Skiff

With a spotless season record, the men's swimming and diving team enters its final home meet this season against UNLV for a chance at the Mountain West Conference dual meet title.

The Horned Frogs have never won a conference title in swimming and diving as members of the Mountain West Conference.

Head coach Richard Sybesma attributed the season success to the leadership and motivation on the team.

"They have the goals, not just the coaches having the goals for them," Sybesma said. "They're talking about being a top-25 program…they're talking about being conference champions, not just the coaches saying 'this is where we want to be.' It's where they want to be."

Sybesma said a great deal of that leadership comes from senior swimmers Josh Bagby and Ben Biefnes.

Biefnes agreed that leadership has been an important factor in the team's success this season.

"If you can get everyone to focus on one thing you can do things you never would have imagined," he said.

The men finished last year's season with a dual meet record of 4-5 and currently have an undefeated 6-0 record, 4-0 in conference. The Rebels' men's team also has an untouched conference record of 4-0 but suffered two outside losses for a 6-2 overall record this season.

The women will take part in the action this Saturday as well.

The TCU women's team is currently 2-5 in conference, tied with UNLV. The women are 7-6 overall for the season.

After a big win over Centenary College last weekend, the men took home 9 of 11 events while the women swept the competition, winning all 11.

"I think winning that meet gave us a lot of momentum into this week," Sybesma said.

The Frogs' strongest competitors at Centenary included junior Edgar Peyro, this week's MWC swimmer of the week, and freshman Rachel Nash. Peyro and Nash both brought in two individual titles.

Last year, the H2O Frogs lost their dual meet against the Rebels.

The men fell 184-113 while the women suffered a more narrow loss of 166-134.

The meet action takes place Saturday starting at 4 p.m. The seniors on both the men's and women's teams will be honored prior to the meet.

"The fact that it's the senior meet and that it's for a conference title is a cool feeling," Bagby said. We've worked all year for this, and now that it's here, it's put up or shut up."

Sybesma echoed his excitement for the weekend's meet.

"The opportunity to have one meet come down for the conference title is pretty special," Sybesma said. "We're just excited to be there."

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