GROVE CITY, Pa. -- The new kids in the pool are hoping to make a splash this week.

The Allegheny College men's and women's swimming and diving teams will spend the next four days competing at the 2022-23 Presidents' Athletic Conference (PAC) Championships, hosted by Grove City College, from Wednesday, February 15, through Saturday, February 18.

The PAC Championships begin on Wednesday at 7:00 p.m. with diving prelims and the 800-yard freestyle relay. Preliminary events on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday are all scheduled to start at 10:00 a.m. Finals will be held at 6:00 p.m. on Thursday and Friday and at 5:30 p.m. on Saturday.

Please click here for a complete schedule of all the swimming and diving events at the PAC Championships. Admission for Wednesday is free. Individual session tickets (prelims and finals) for Thursday, Friday, and Saturday will be available each day for $10 at the ticket booth. For more information on when tickets are available for each session, please click here.

Although the Gators are in their first season in the PAC after nearly four decades in the North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC), Allegheny is no stranger to success in this conference. Before becoming a founding member of the NCAC in 1984, the men's swimming and diving team won three consecutive PAC championships. In total, the Allegheny men won 14 PAC titles between 1959 and 1984; the PAC did not sponsor a women's championship at that time.

Fast forward to 2023, and Allegheny enters the four-day championship competition with eyes on several prizes. Two relay teams, the men's 800-yard freestyle (7:05.39) and women's 200-yard medley (1:48.58), enter this week with the top-seeded time in the PAC. Individually, Olivia Kraus (Pittsburgh, Pa./North Allegheny), Josephine Reiter (Pittsburgh, Pa./CAPA), and Daniel Jackson (Warwick, N.Y./Warwick Valley) are seeded first in four races.

Kraus is hunting for gold in the 50- and 100-yard freestyle races. She already broke her own school record with a time of 23.65 in the 50-yard freestyle earlier this winter, and that time is a mere two-hundredths of a second shy of an NCAA B cut. In the 100-yard freestyle, she sits first on the psych sheet with a time of 52.41 seconds, which is seven hundredths of a second faster than the time that won last year's 100 free championship.

Reiter, who won numerous PAC Rookie of the Week awards in an impressive debut season, swam a conference-best time of 1:08.21 in the 100-yard breaststroke, more than a full second quicker than the defending champion, Sara Basala of Saint Vincent College.

For the Allegheny men, Jackson ranks first in the 200-yard breaststroke at 2:07.06, again putting him ahead of the 2022 winner, Elias Griffin of Grove City. Pierre Jaeggi (Fountain Valley, Calif./Valiant Prep), Emmett Manning (Holmdel, N.J./Holmdel), and Jack Malnar (Brecksville, Ohio/Brecksville-Broadview Heights) are also among the top two in their respective events.

The challenge for both swimming teams will be upsetting the Wolverines in their home pool. The host of the PAC Championships since 1990, Grove City has won four consecutive men's titles and three straight on the women's side. Both teams were selected No. 1 in the preseason coaches' poll, while the Gators were picked third on both sides. 

Streaming video and live results will be available each day for those unable to attend the 2022-23 PAC Championships at Grove City's James E. Longnecker Competition Pool.