The Eastern men’s and women’s swim teams will take on Valparaiso in the second of four straight weekend home meets Saturday at 1 p.m..

After having several swimmers delivered their season’s best performances in last weekends meet against Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, the Panthers will strive to do as well Saturday against Valparaiso.

“I fully expect to see more top performances from not only our better swimmers, but from others as well,” Panther head coach Ray Padovan said.

This meet should be both competitive and exciting for the Panthers, after last weekends victory over IUPUI.

“Valparaiso will be good competition for us,” Padovan said. “They have solid swimmers across the board, however, we have a slight advantage because we have more overall depth than they do.”

The Panther women will look to freshman Jordan Sherbrook to deliver solid performances in all of her events. They also hope to see top performances from sophomore Allison Kenny, senior Christine Przybylski and from senior Amanda Dore who had a personal best in the 50-meter freestyle against IUPUI last weekend.

“Amanda is one of our better swimmers, she had her best performance in the 50 free last weekend,” Padovan said.

On the men’s side, the Panthers hope to see more of the solid performances they did last weekend from Josh Kercheval, Nic Cheviron, and freshman Rich Wahlgren.

“Josh is an exception,” Padovan said. “Most people don’t swim that fast all year.”

Nic Cheviron had a season best in the 1000 freestyle with a time of 10:09.34 despite a sore back, while Rich Wahlgren placed first in the 50 freestyle.

After Saturday’s meet against Valparaiso, Eastern will face two more teams at home before heading to the Mid-East Classic Championships, which take place on February 22nd.

“This is the point in the season when we’re starting to shift our focus towards preparing for the competition,” Padovan said. “The only thing that we really have to worry about in these next four weeks is staying away from the flu.”