Oct. 5, 2005

COLUMBIA, Mo. - The Missouri swimming and diving teams will open their 2005-06 seasons on Saturday when they host the Show-Me-Showdown, the first-ever intercollegiate competition in the Mizzou Aquatics Center. The event also marks the first time in the 40-year history of the program that the Tigers have hosted an invitational.

Drury and Truman State, the men's and women's 2004-05 Division II national champions, respectively, headline the six-team field traveling to Columbia on Saturday. They are joined by Saint Louis, Missouri State, Washington University-St. Louis and Missouri-Rolla

"I'm excited about the teams we have coming in for this meet," Mizzou head coach Brian Hoffer said. "These teams all have great coaches. This will really be an opportunity to show how good swimming is on the collegiate level in Missouri."

After opening the pool with their annual alumni meet two weeks ago, and seeing the Mizzou teams in the water last week in the Black and Gold intrasquad meet, the Tigers will officially open up the state-of-the-art Mizzou Aquatics Center to competition with the Show-Me-Showdown.

"It's been a long time coming," Hoffer said. "It feels like a whole new atmosphere around here. It reminds me of when I first got here 12 years. It began with a student vote, then we got the designs drawn up and the construction underway, now we're finally here. It's exciting to be able to start competition."

Both the Tiger men and defeated Drury, Missouri State and Truman State in dual action last year, but, according to Hoffer, this meet is about performance rather than victories.

"We're going to enter the meet with the goal of coming out on top, but we also want to see how people are going to race," he said. "We're tired right now, so we're not going to overanalyze this meet. We really want to get the team used to getting going on meet days and we'll see how they respond."

The meet will be broken up into two sessions, starting at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., respectively. The teams will take to the pool for warm-ups beginning at 9 a.m.

Each team may score their top two swimmers in each event, and each school's "A" relay will earn points. The order of events is as follows:

Session One

200 Free Relay

100 IM

100 Fly

100 Back

100 Breast

200 Free

1 or 3-meter diving

450 Crescendo Relay (25-50-75-150-75-50-25)

Session 2

400 Free Relay

200 IM

50 Breast

50 Back

50 Fly

500 Free

Rip Diving Contest

200 Medley Relay