Tomorrow’s meet against Georgetown was going to be bittersweet to begin with for the Terrapins men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams. Senior Day, after all, often elicits emotions from all ends of the spectrum, offering a time to reflect and look forward.
But tomorrow is different, because tomorrow might be the final time a Terps team hits the pool deck for a meet at Eppley Recreation Center.
The specter of last semester’s report by the President’s Commission on Intercollegiate Athletics, recommending the teams be eliminated, has loomed over the pool constantly this winter. It will be no different tomorrow. The teams’ seniors are leaving programs that they helped build, not knowing their place in the university’s future. The underclassmen are left to wonder whether they will have a team to swim for at all. But the Terps have maintained a positive attitude that borders on defiance, and they won’t lose it now.
“The general mood is that this isn’t our last home meet as a team,” co-captain and senior Ginny Glover said. “Most of the underclassmen are planning on returning to the UMD swim team next year.”
As far as the teams are concerned, there is nothing out of the ordinary about tomorrow’s meet. It is a late-season matchup with a nearby school that has potential postseason implications. But to everyone outside this tight-knit community, the meet itself will take a backseat to the story that surrounds it.
The teams’ ups and downs have become as intertwined in the season’s saga as the support the Terps received in the wake of their program’s near-death sentence. Opponents that came to College Park brought supportive signs and chants with them, and others from as far away as the West Coast took to social media to show their love, something Glover called “amazing to see.”
Glover said the team-wide sentiment is the support the Terps have received is one more indication they will in fact be back next year. While that remains to be determined, swimmers are proceeding as if their future has been solidified. The ACC and NCAA Championships are fast approaching, and Glover will be training for Olympic trials after that.
The teams’ days after tomorrow, Glover said, are just “one more obstacle that we will overcome as a team.”
benscher@umdbk.com
