It has been almost a month since the Eastern men’s and women’s swim teams had a meet in their home pool. The Panthers will host Saint Louis Friday night at 5 p.m. in the Padovan Pool.

Coach Jacqueline Michalski said the team is really excited to have the opportunity to swim at home after being away for so long.

“Home meets are always really exciting for us,” Michalski said. “They always give us a lot of energy because we have professors that come, we have a lot of family that travels down, other student-athletes from other sports appear and just a lot of student will kind of stop by and see the team.”

It is also really warm on the pool deck, so when it is cold out people tend to stop by more often, she said.

Eastern competed in the House of Champions meet two weeks ago at Indiana-Purdue University Indianapolis, where the men placed seventh out of nine teams and the women placed tenth out of 10.

Despite the back of the pack finishes Michalski said she was happy with the times that were posted.

The men currently have a record of 1-4 and the women are 2-4.

Coach Jacqueline Michalski said Saint Louis is a strong team that has a lot of depth in the events.

“SLU just has a lot of depth and a lot of different athletes (coach Jim Halliburton) can swim around in a lot of different events,” Michalski said. “They’re a team we’ve always swam against and it’s my hope within the next year or two become more and more competitive with them.”

The men and women both lost to the Billikens last year but Eastern is swimming faster times this year even though the record does not show that.

The men and women both defeated Valparaiso in the Padovan Pool back on Nov. 7.

This weekend the Panthers will be swimming the 100-yard of stroke and 50-yard of stroke. Michalski added the 50-yard events instead of the usual 200-yard events to add more sprint events.

“We don’t have as many longer events, so some of our 200 of stroke people will have the ability to get up and sprint a 50, which they don’t always get to do, so it should be fun to see some different events out of them,” Michalski said.

Michalski said that the team has a much better mental approach since the House of Champions meet.

The team had Thanksgiving break off just like the rest of us and she said it did the team some good.

“They came back with a new energy to really train and get after these next three weeks we have while we’re here on campus,” Michalski said. “It should really be a good meet tomorrow because our energy is really high.”

The Panthers are currently 1-1 when swimming in their home pool. This meet is setting up to be a good one.

All throughout the season the swimmers have been seeing their personal times drop, and will see if that trend will continue against Saint Louis.

Sean Hastings can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected]