Northwestern Women to Face Five B1G Foes Under New Head Coach Steketee

It’s head coach Abby Steketee‘s first year at the helm of the Northwestern Women’s Swimming and Diving team, and today the program released its meet schedule for the 2015-16 season. Steketee comes to the Chicago area after three years of head coaching at the University of Nevada, and this year is a homecoming for her, of sorts; the Virginia native attended Northwestern and graduated in 2003 after serving as captain of the rowing team.

Kicking off the season in just over three weeks’ time, the Wildcats will host their Alumnae meet in Evanston, Illinois, on October 16th. Next, they’ll travel into the city for a four-team matchup with the University of Chicago, the University of Illinois-Chicago, and Denison University.

The Wildcats will open B1G competition at the University of Illinois on October 30th, a dual meet which they won last year.  Two weeks later, the Wisconsin Badgers will battle with the Wildcats in Evanston on November 14th.

The annual TYR Invitational takes place November 20-22, and Northwestern will look to defend their title from last season. That’ll be the ‘Cats last competition before winter break. They will then kick off the new year with a dual at Notre Dame on January 16th. Northwestern squeaked out a narrow 154-146 win over the Fighting Irish last season, as well as a equally exciting 152-142 victory over then-ranked #21 Iowa.

This year, the ‘Cats host Iowa on January 23rd, then turn around a week later to host both Minnesota and Purdue for their last regular season meet of the winter.

The five-day B1G Championships are hosted by the University of Michigan this year, and the ‘Cats will travel to Ann Arbor for that meet from February 17th to the 21st. Any NCAA qualifiers for Northwestern will compete at the NCAA Championships a month after that at Georgia Tech. See the full schedule below: