While walking along the outskirts of the 25-yard pool in the McCoy Natatorium, Nittany Lions head coach John Hargis glances back and forth between his stopwatch and the water.
While timing the workout, Hargis, always willing to answer questions, pauses for a moment and chuckles when asked if he has decided where to place his swimmers at the Big Ten Championship.
"Do you think I'm gonna tell you that?" Hargis said.
While Hargis was just joking around, he was serious about not revealing specifics about the meet.
At the Big Ten Championship, each swimmer can race in no more than a combination of seven races, with restrictions placed on the number of individual and the number of relays. Because of the competitiveness of the conference and the magnitude of the event, there is a bit of strategy that goes into where the coaches place their athletes.
A preliminary list of which events the swimmers will be participating in, which is referred to as a psych sheet, is released a few days before the meet and factors into the decisions of the coaches.
Hargis said the philosophy of mixing up athletes to try and see who other teams will race is one shared by all swim coaches and "the game of hiding," as he called it, is one of the few strategies in the sport.
"We want to look at who will swim the best for us," Hargis said. "But at the same time we don't want to overload an event with all of our kids, because at that point we will be knocking own people out."
Coaches have to enter the swimmers in their events on Monday, but have until the night before each day of competition to scratch them from the event. Hargis said all the Lions competing at Big Tens will swim in at least the three individual events and if there is even a one percent chance a swimmer will compete in the event, they will be entered.
Many of the veteran swimmers have a good understanding of what individual events they will swim, but it becomes more complicated when dealing with the relays. With many of the Lions being very versatile, Hargis said he and his staff have been having long conversations about where to place many of the relay swimmers.
"I feel like I know who I'm going to be swimming against and how they are going to split," senior Kaitlin O'Brien said. "I feel like because of my experience at Big Tens I don't look at the sheet as much as if it were NCAAs, but I know some of my teammates do."
The reason it's so important to try and understand where each team will place its swimmers is because in order to be successful, teams need to earn points from several individuals and multiple relays. This involves having strong finishers who can secure the other points available in the race.
Hargis downplayed the importance the psych sheet has on his athletes and said until it's officially on the heat sheet the morning of the meet, he doesn't want them to worry about it.
Senior Caitlin Meehan said the sheet does motivate some people and helps them to get acclimated to the meet, but she does not concern herself with it.
"If someone is passing them out in the locker room or wants to tell me where I'm seeded I will tune them out," Meehan said. "I'm only concerned on that day because anything can happen and I think if you believe that it puts you in a better position than if you are concentrating on the people next to you."
While the swimmers will try and take care of business in the pool, the divers follow their own strategy. Diving coach Craig Brown admitted the sport has very few strategically advantageous aspects, but said the divers list, which is the order of dives they perform is very important.
Brown said senior Courtney Adlam and sophomore Megan Marco each are taking different approaches to how they order in which they perform their dives.
Brown said Adlam's previous experience at the Big Ten Championship gives her the confidence to open her list with a back takeoff. He believes all of her dives set-up the next and therefore decided to put her really tough dives in the front.
Marco's order will start with her strongest dives first, because Brown said he wants to get out of the gate running. He said this will help her gain some confidence and then she will close with a strong dive.
Although the team understands the strategy is only a minimal part of the meet, Hargis said it still comes down to execution.
"At the end of the day we have to take care of business," Hargis said. "No matter who we put anywhere we know what we gotta do to be successful."
