With finals week coming up, the swimming and diving team will send only three athletes to the AT&T Winter National Championships this weekend in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Senior Shelby Lacy , senior Hannah Pugh and freshman Alex Trompke  will take part in the high-level competition along with unattached post graduate swimmers, high school teams, Olympic athletes and other college teams.

Athletes must meet a qualification standard t o compete at the national meet, and many Spartans did.

“The problem is this meet is so close to exams and all three of those kids are well fitting academically. They can get away with missing the last two days of classes,” head coach Matt Gianiodis  said. “It was so close to exams — you just couldn’t take the chance bringing everybody down there.”

Other Big Ten schools competing in the event include Michigan, Indiana and Ohio.  Other powerful programs include UCLA and Louisville.  Gianiodis said, there will be about 10 Olympic-level athletes there.

“When you have the chance to go up against Olympians and kids who are really good, it should help you down the road,” Gianiodis said. “(Lacy and Pugh) are senior(s), so they are pretty experienced, although they’ve never been to a national event before. (Trompke) is just a freshman so this should help him to see the level of competition needed to swim fast. He should get a lot out of it.”

Two weeks ago at Northwestern, Lacy had the “meet of her life,” Gianiodis said, taking first in the 50-yard breaststroke, 200-yard medley relay and 200-yard breaststroke championship final.

“It will be really tough to duplicate two weeks later,” Gianiodis said. “The hope is that those three kids go down there and have a good experience to bring back in the spring.”