This weekend the Panther swimmers will travel to Bowling Green, Ky. for the Western Kentucky Invitational meet.

This will be the team’s first meet since Nov. 5, when they beat Lincoln College at home in Padovan Pool.

Eastern’s head coach Matt Bos said the layoff between meets is a swimming thing.

“We’ve kind of scheduled meets this year around our training blocks,” Bos said. “The meet schedule will really allow for good, solid weeks of training.”

Bos said swimming is not like other sports because they schedule their meets around their training sessions, not the other way around.

“We have these meets throughout the year, and they’re kind of just benchmarks to see where we’re at,” Bos said. “Our whole year really comes down to one meet, and that’s our conference championships in February.”

The swim teams are members of the Summit League, which also includes Centenary, Indiana/Purdue-Fort Wayne, Indiana/Purdue-Indianapolis, Missouri-Kansas City, North Dakota State, Oakland University, Oral Roberts, South Dakota State, Southern Utah and Western Illinois.

Looking ahead to this year, Bos said the Panther men are looking to improve and have high expectations.

“The guys are coming off a really good year last year, especially with a lot of young guys on the squad,” Bos said. “We had 10 freshmen score at our conference championships last year. We had two freshmen that won conference championships.”

Bos said the women’s team lost a lot of senior swimmers.

“We lost a lot of senior leadership last year, so we’re kind of coming in a little bit younger this year, so it’s kind of a rebuilding year. This season’s going to be a work in progress,” Bos said.

Bos is in his third season as the Panther swim team coach, having taken over for longtime coach Ray Padovan, who Bos swam for when Bos was at Eastern.

He said it is helpful taking over a program that he was a part of during his college career.

“When you come in your first year in any program, there are going to be things that you need to get used to, and having been here before, being familiar with the surroundings and the school helped out a whole lot,” Bos said.

Bos said looking forward to this weekend’s meet, the Panthers are not viewing it so much as a team competition, but rather as a benchmark to see where the team is and how they have progressed in their training.

“There are team scores, but we’re not worried so much about where we’re going to finish as a team in this meet. This is a good meet for us to go in as individuals and to see what each individual is doing and where everybody can improve,” Bos said.

The Panthers will swim in Bowling Green, Ky. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. The team’s following meet will be Jan. 4, 2011.

Brad Kupiec can be reached at 581-7944 or [email protected].