The Eastern swim teams are headed to one of the biggest meets this season at the House of Champions.

It marks the half-way point for the team and gives an idea of how the team and the swimmers have done so far this season.

Coach Jacqueline Michalski said that it is a great opportunity to focus on swimming one event a day rather than trying to swim a bunch of events in a meet to try to win the meet.

“It’s great for us to focus in on and be a lot more detail oriented at this meet as compared to dual meets,” Michalski said.

A goal for for the team is to see where they are at, junior Jennings Soccorso-McCoy said.

“(We) go in as tired as we can and do the best we can. We’re not tapering or resting for this,” Soccorso-McCoy said. “We’re really trying to not take too much time from training like other teams are and see how well we do.”

Junior Brandon Robbins said that a key was to not compare themselves to other teams because they might not be where they are.

Junior Patrick Wood said that the team just needs to have fun and support each other.

The House of Champions will be a good point to see if the swimmers are close to their best times and in-season best times.

“If we go to our best times now, then when we get to conference, we’ll be like ‘Alright I did this well un-tapered, without a suit, and beat up and now I’m tapered, with a suit’ so it kind of gives you a mental boost at the end of the year,” Soccorso-McCoy said.

If teams are tapered, Michalski said the focus only matters on who the team is and it does not matter what anyone else does.

“You can’t control it, so you focus on what you can control,” Michalski said. “You can control you going up and giving it your all and going fast.”

Newly added at the House of Champions is another heat of finals. It is a six-session meet where teams swim during the day and at night. Wood said that most swimmers will be swimming twice a day so that will help them prepare for conference.

Also added to the House of Champions is that 18 teams will now compete.

Those teams include the likes of Florida State, Wabash College, Missouri State, Miami (Fla.), Purdue, Western Illinois, Kentucky and Evansville, who the Panthers saw last week.

Last year, the men finished seventh, while the women took 10th place.

The House of Champions takes place this weekend at IUPUI.

Tyler McCluskey can be reached at 581-2812 or at trmccluskey@eiu.edu.