For collegiate swimmers and divers, conference and NCAA meets are the end of the road. This weekend the Penn State men's swimming and diving team will compete at the Big Ten championships in Minnesota, one of the highest level meets in which swimmers will ever have the chance to compete.
Other college athletes have the opportunity to continue their careers after graduation and compete professionally.
Football has the NFL, the Arena League, NFL Europe and even a pro league in Canada.
Basketball has the NBA and an abundance of pro leagues around the world, for men and women.
Baseball has its major leagues, as well as minor league systems that stretch from large cities to small towns across America.
But for swimmers and divers, the only level higher than collegiate is the Olympics, but even then the competition is made up of a large number of college athletes.
This is evident during Olympic seasons, when college programs accommodate their amateur athletes by swimming long-course events in an Olympic-size 50-meter pool instead of the normal short-course events in a 25-yard pool during non-Olympic years.
"There is no pro league in swimming, which means Division I swimming is the top of the food chain," Penn State coach Bill Dorenkott said. "If you look in the Big Ten, you'll see people who've won gold medals and set world records competing at our Big Ten championships -- they're in our league now."
The Big Ten is one of the strongest swimming leagues in the world.
Along with other power conferences like the Atlantic Coast Conference and Pacific-10, the Big Ten boasts several Olympic medalists and even more Olympic participants from multiple countries.
The Big Ten also has one notable Olympian among its ranks.
Eight-time Olympic medalist Michael Phelps is a volunteer assistant coach for No. 5 Michigan.
Though Phelps went straight to the Olympics after high school, it didn't take him long to catch on with a college program after the Athens games.
Phelps' personal coach before and during the Olympics, Bob Bowman, became the Wolverines' head coach after the games.
Phelps was quick to follow Bowman to Michigan, a program that already had several Olympians on the roster.
Peter Vanderkaay, a junior for the Wolverines, represented Team USA in Athens and won a gold medal in the 800-meter freestyle relay.
His Wolverines teammate, senior Andrew Hurd, was a member of Team Canada in the 2000 and 2004 Olympics.
Penn State's first Olympic swimmer was Eugene Botes, a senior last season, who swam the 100 butterfly for South Africa in Athens.
Given the talent, past and present, in the Big Ten, it is understandable why Penn State senior Patrik Johansson refers to the Big Ten meet as the "big leagues."
"It's definitely a little bit of nerves if you haven't been to the big leagues before," said Johansson, a native of Sweden who has previously participated in international competition.
"It's a now-or-never type of thing," he said.
The large scale of the conference meet and the amount of talent in the pool can be overwhelming to young swimmers.
"My freshman year I was pretty nervous going into the meet and it was pretty hard to get by that, but last year I had a good breakthrough," junior Shawn McLin said.
McLin finished in the top eight in the 100 and 200 backstroke and scored valuable points for the Nittany Lions in his second trip to the Big Ten meet.
For other Big Ten swimmers, the conference meet is a precursor to Olympic greatness.
For some like senior diver Marc Gastaldo, who has been diving for 12 years, it is a continuation of an undying passion.
"I pretty much go in to it just to have fun. If I have a good time, I do well, and if I do well, I have a good time," he said.
No matter what the intentions, one thing is clear: collegiate swimming is the pinnacle of the sport.
"The fastest man in the world is a volunteer assistant coach in our league, which means this is where it's at. If kids are having Olympic success, it means they were having success at the Division I level," Dorenkott said.
"There's not another level. This is it."
