Indiana Wesleyan University, an Evangelical Christian school located in Marion, Indiana has announced that it will soon be starting up a women’s swimming and diving team. The university currently offers nine intercollegiate sports for both men and women within the Crossroads League, and Athletic Director Mark DeMichael said the new women’s team will be “coming either next year or the year after.”
Indiana Wesleyan’s sports teams compete in the Crossroads League and is a member of both the NAIA and NCCAA.
The team’s creation is made possible by an anonymous donor who presented a check to the school for the entire startup coast of the team. “We had a set cost for start up, and when you start a program, it’s that start up money that the university needs to come up [with],” said DeMichael. “This person basically stepped up and wrote a check for the entire starting cost, so it really won’t cost the university anything for the first year to start the program.”
In terms of a head coach, “We’ll hire somebody probably in the spring and then depending on how the recruiting thing looks, we’ll either hopefully have our first 10-person team next year or wait until the following year,” said DeMichael. He indicated that after the first season, the 10-person roster would increase to 15 the following year, then 20 swimmers after the 3rd season with no less after that. The plan is for open tryouts to be held as soon as a coach has been hired, with the head coach held to a required amount of recruits.
However, there is one glitch in the plan, the pool within Indiana Wesleyan’s Recreation and Wellness Center is a couple of inches short of regulation, which means the school will not be able to host any sanctioned meet. “We’re a couple inches short, so what that means is we won’t be able to have big meets here,” said DeMichael. “It’s fine for practice, it’s fine for a dual meet, but any times that we report here won’t be official times that would qualify our swimmers for a national championship. We will go to a lot of meets at other places.”
