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MSU Swimming Looking to Build for Future | Current Sports | WKAR

As Michigan State’s swimming and diving teams look forward to the 2015-16 season, they see this past one as a foundation.

In 2015, the women’s team scored 65 points at the Big Ten championship, placing them in 13th. The men’s team, had slightly better results, with 82 points and a 10th place finish.

And although Michigan State produced no NCAA qualifiers in the 2015 season, Matt Gianiodis, MSU’s head swimming coach, feels 2016 holds promise.

“Our women divers have a great chance and we also feel like we have swimmers in position to get there (the NCAA championships),” said Gianiodis. “On the men’s side, we feel we have two or three different events in which we can qualify.”

Getting more Spartans in point scoring heats at Big Ten’s and swimmers qualified for NCAA’s remains key priorities, but there also will be additional goals for next season. Gianiodis said that the teams No. 1 goal moving forward will be to qualify a big group of athletes for the June 2016 Olympic Trials.

“In 2012 we took six people and one of our kids made the semi-finals in the 100 meter butterfly,” said Gianiodis. “We would really like to improve off of that.”

Many school records were broken in the 2015 season and numerous more were brought within reach. And to top it off, the underclassmen on both the men’s and women’s teams were some of the top performers of the season, showing much promise for the years to come.

MSU’s season has come to a close, but the team didn’t take much of a vacation, and are already back to work.

“We have already begun our post-season training and our team has a great attitude- having a championship level summer is really important and I think our team understands that,” said Gianiodis. “The process of success in 2016 really begins daily in the spring and summer of 2015.”

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