Oct. 8, 2003

The University of Missouri women's swimming and diving team is headed to Fayetteville, Ark. this weekend to compete against the University of Arkansas Lady'Backs and the two-time defending National Champion Auburn Tigers in a tri-meet.

The format for a tri-meet is quite different from the traditional dual meet. At this meet Mizzou will compete against Arkansas and Auburn separately. In each event only two entries per team are allowed making it a necessity for one of the entries to finish in the top three in order to have hopes of scoring points for the team.

Heading into the meet the Tigers are looking for strong performances from their top athletes: seniors Sarah Lo, Andrea Nigh, and Rebecca Wolfe. All three are 2003 NCAA Qualifiers and rank among the all-time top-5 in school history in their respective events.

The Arkansas Lady'Backs return 16 letter winners from last years squad and add seven newcomers creating a very strong squad that finished 5-5 last year.

This season, Auburn is poised for another run at the NCAA Championship title as the two-time defending national champions enter the 2003-04 season with minimal letter winner losses from last season and are undefeated in the past two seasons.

Missouri Head Coach Brian Hoffer is looking forward to the opportunity to compare his women's team against, arguably, the best team in the country, Auburn.

"We are very excited about racing these two SEC teams. We're going to be the outsiders coming in from the Big 12, but we look forward to the opportunity to be able to race against these two very challenging teams. It's going to be a good early season challenge for us to find out where we are as a team and what we have to do to prepare to compete in the Big 12."