Nov. 14, 2012

STANFORD, Calif. - The Stanford men's swimming team will compete in the three-day Arena Invitational spanning from Nov. 15-17 in Long Beach, Calif., while the Cardinal divers will travel to Tucson, Ariz., for the Arizona Diving Invite (Nov. 16-18).

The Arena Invitational will serve as a final bookend to the first half of the season for the swimmers, who will resume competition with a home dual meet against Pacific on Jan. 5.

"The invite this weekend is a great opportunity to race in a championship meet format," Goldman Family Director of Men's Swimming Ted Knapp said. "It's a way to evaluate our training to date and compete as a rehearsal for the NCAA Championships."

Stanford will be one of nine teams taking part in the Arena Invitational along with Air Force, Arizona State, BYU, Cal Poly, Cal State Bakersfield, Hawaii, UC Santa Barbara and host UC San Diego.

The meet will be held at the Belmont Plaza Olympic Pool and each day of the swimming will begin with the men's events at 9 a.m. (PT). Finals begin at 6 p.m. on Thursday and Friday with Saturday's start time slated to start between 5-5:30 p.m. Live results will be available at GoStanford.com.

Entering the Arena Invitational, Stanford holds the top seed in a number of events including the 500 free (Drew Cosgarea - 4:21.78), 200 IM (David Nolan - 1:44.69), 50 free (Aaron Wayne - 19.85), 400 medley relay (3:15.65), 400 IM (Matt Thompson - 3:46.58), 200 free (Thomas Stephens - 1:37.05), 100 back (Matthew Swanston - 47.50), 1,650 free (Danny Thomson - 9:07.31), 200 back (David Nolan - 1:42.05), 100 free (Wayne - 43.54) and the 200 breast (Sebastian Wigstrom - 2:01.29).

"It's a working meet more than anything else," head diving coach Rick Schavone said. "I'll let them dive the meet and evaluate them from there. Naturally, I'd rather have them dive well than poorly, but we're going to get some experience in a championship format to see where we are at this time of the year."