This weekend will be a special one for women's swimming anddiving coach Laura Seibold-Caudill. After Ball State squares offwith IUPUI and St. Louis on Friday in Indianapolis, Michigan State,her alma mater, visits Muncie Saturday afternoon. Seibold-Caudillwas a diver for the Spartans' 1971-76 squads.
"I'd love to beat them," she said.
But despite that desire, Seibold-Caudill is treating this meetlike any other. She wants to win, but realizes the task at handwill not be easy.
"On paper, they're stronger than us," she said. "We're going tohave to swim extremely well to beat them. I think we need to focuson the process and not the outcome, because I don't want to worryabout it being a win or loss."
The Cardinals are coming off two tough weekends. Last weekend,Miami spoiled their home opener by beating the Cards. ButSeibold-Caudill shows no sign of discouragement.
"The nice thing about swimming is that we know we had threetough loses, but right now, we need to look at individualperformances. By doing that, you can still walk away somewhatpleased," she said.
"We had some really good swims on Saturday and our performancesshow that each weekend we're getting better and better. That's whatwe're looking for. We need to worry about the final outcome -- thechampionship at the end of the season and how we're going to reachthat."
The women start their weekend with a trip to Indianapolis toface IUPUI and St. Louis. Seibold-Caudill expects St. Louis to betough competition, especially in the breaststroke, but is hopingthe Cards can return with two victories.
"That would ease the pain of the past two weekends," shesaid.
Michigan State, however, should be the tougher of the two meets.According to Seibold-Caudill, the Spartan's Janet Jones(freestyle), Courtney Ellabarger (breaststroke) and the diving ofAlexis Goolik should make for some tough competition.
Michigan State does have its weaknesses, however, including the200 butterfly and individual. Overall, Seibold-Caudill is expectinga difficult battle.
"Whenever you hear a MAC school beating a Big 10 football team,that's an 'ooh' and an 'ah,'" she said. "It's the same in swimming.It's the whole next level up. We have swimmers that can beattheirs, (but) we've got to capitalize on our strong points."
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