Saluki women’s swimming coach Mark Kluemper said that hosting the event is an honor for him, as well as the University.

It’s pretty special for the athletes and the coaches to hold the first ever anything, he said. It isn’t that often that you get to do that.

Saluki men’s swimming coach Rick Walker said being the host school is great, bur winning the event would make it even more special.

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It’s an honor, without question, he said. But it would be an even bigger honor to win it.

SIUC’s main competition is expected to come from Illinois State, but Kluemper said Evansville could pose some problems for the Salukis.

Evansville could be tough, because they’re the unknown factor, he said.

We don’t know a whole lot about them.

Walker said the Salukis may be the favorites going into the meet, but Southwest Missouri State will have an impact on the outcome.

It’s going to be a matter of depth, he said. That’s going to be to Southwest’s (Missouri State) advantage, and not necessarily to ours.

Walker said he is confident in the Saluki’s ability to do well at the meet, but he will be depending on the team as a whole to win.

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The competition will be tough, so we’ll be relying on swimmers who have been finishing fifth and sixth in our previous meets to step up and do the job, Walker said. We need them to do well because we could win every event, but still lose the meet. We need them to step up and get us the extra points we’ll need to win.

The MVC Championships will be SIUC’s first meet in three weeks, but Kluemper and Walker said the layoff will help the Salukis this weekend.

It’s been good for us because it’s allowed us to rest and prepare for it (MVC Championship), Walker said.

We probably went too many weekends in a row, Kluemper said.

We swam four straight weekends, and that’s probably why we were flat going into Champaign. The time off has really helped.

The three-day MVC Championship meet starts Friday evening at 5 p.m.

The meet continues Saturday with preliminary heats at 11 a.m. and finals at 7 p.m.

Sunday’s preliminaries begin at 10 a.m. with finals heats starting at 6 p.m.