PROVO, Utah – The first annual BYU Invite was a successful community event for aspiring Utah swimmers ages 12 and older, as well as for the men's and women’s Cougar swim teams. Just over 20 schools from the surrounding Utah counties, schools and aquatic clubs participated in the three-day event.

“This gave the high school kids who don’t have the opportunity to participate in a preliminaries/finals meet a chance to compete with the college kids and get that experience,” BYU coach Yolanda Bates said.

With preliminaries in the mornings and finals in the evenings, young Utah swimmers were given the chance to experience some success at a higher level.

For the BYU men’s and women’s diving team, many of the swimmers used the event as an opportunity to help improve their personal-best times and to give a little more competition to the high school students wanting to swim in college.

The BYU coaches hope to continue to host the BYU Invite in the years to come with an extended invitation to more Utah colleges to participate in the meet. 

PROVO, Utah – A select group of BYU swimmers will compete in the Texas Invite this weekend while the remaining swimmers compete in the BYU Invite beginning Thursday and continuing through Saturday evening.

Texas Invite

“We’re bringing people who we believe have a legitimate chance of making it to NCAAs [championships] through a relay or individually, and we’re hoping for the best,” BYU head coach John Brooks said. “They are very well rested and have an opportunity to shine so we’re expecting good results.”

Seniors Kimberly Doroghian and Hailey Campbell, junior Andrea Grant and sophomore Alexandria Sorensen will represent the BYU women’s.

Senior Jordan Fletcher, juniors Rafael Alfaro and Hayden Palmer, sophomores McKay King, Chad Sorensen, and Jake Taylor and freshmen Lucas Aquino and Rainer Ng will compete for the BYU men’s team.

The participating teams include host Texas, UCLA (women’s team only), USC, Arizona, Wisconsin, Penn State, Harvard, UC Santa Barbara and Oklahoma Baptist.

The Texas Invite begins with preliminaries each morning at 10 a.m. CST and finals each night at 6 p.m.  A complete schedule with a list of events can be found at the Texas Invite page. To follow along with the action, check out the live results page.

BYU Invite

Also this weekend, BYU swimming hosts its first invitational extended to the public at the Richards Building pool.

“This is the first BYU Invitational where we’re trying to promote opportunities not only for the university level, but to reach out to the community at large,” Brooks said.

Swimmers from the University of Utah travel to Provo to compete in the meet along with 150 high school students from various Utah schools. The meet kicks off Thursday evening and continues through Saturday evening. The Cougars swim on Friday and Saturday, wrapping up their 2013 schedule at home.

The BYU Invite begins on Thursday at 6 p.m. MT. On Friday and Saturday, preliminaries begin at 10 a.m. and finals at 6 p.m. For results, visit the men’s schedule page following the meet on Saturday.