Every so often an athlete is simply too strong and too fast for the competition.

This past weekend freshman Deirdre Dlugonski was exactly that.

And she managed to come away with Big Ten Athlete of the Week for women's swimming after dominating the competition.

"She is definitely an asset to our program," senior Alecia Kornacki said. "We were excited but not surprised, she is definitely somebody who deserved it."

Dlugonski and the rest of the Penn State women's swimming team (4-3 1-1 Big Ten) are traveling to Bloomington, Ind., to take on the Hoosiers (4-0-1 3-0-1 Big Ten) and Michigan State in a triangular meet.

The meet will begin 6 tonight and continue through tomorrow where the Nittany Lions, Hoosiers and Spartans will battle it out.

Penn State is confident that someone else will pick up where Dlugonski left off.

"We try and focus on the team but the team does well because of individual accomplishments," sophomore Corrie Clark said.

"You never know who is going to come out of the woodwork."

This weekend's meet holds special importance for the Nittany Lions because the format will mirror that of the Big Ten championship.

In a regular dual meet, swimmers rotate between four and five different events.

In a meet such as this, you are only allowed to swim in three individual events.

"A lot of the people are going to swim the exact same events in this meet that they will swim in the Big Tens," Kornacki said.

Last year Penn State was able to hand No. 19 Indiana their only loss of the season and are 7-0-1 in dual meets against the Hoosiers.

The Spartans (5-3, 1-2 Big Ten) are also coming on strong and could prove to be a tough matchup. However, the Nittany Lions, aware of the physical strain that will come with two consecutive days of swimming hope to use each other as motivation.

"When one person steps into the pool and swims fast the next person just feed off that energy," Clark said.

This will be the team's last chance before the championship meet to swim against Big Ten competition.

Kornacki says they will be looking to see where they are as a team and what areas they need to improve on to insure a strong showing at the end of the season.

"It's going to be a rough meet. They are not going to hold anything back but neither are we," she said.

Penn State points to its diligence in practice as the reason for its success and hopes that it will continue to carry over into their meets.

"Something that we pride ourselves on is that we work on the little details everyday so that the big picture will come together at the end," Clark said.