NIU’s men and women swimmers will tread their way through the Wheaton Invitational Friday and Saturday in efforts to improve last year’s standings.

It will be the last meet this semester for the teams and both coaches are looking for a team effort, as well as a show of improvement since the beginning of the season.

“We have the potential to win it,” said women’s boss Mike Burt. “We need a team effort, and we need everybody to score points. I’m looking for both season and personal best scoring times.”

Both teams will go up against Wheaton, Eastern Illinois and Western Illinois, but in addition, the men will challenge Bradley, and the women will take on Kenyon College and Northern Michigan.

“It should be a pretty good fight between us and Western,” said men’s coach Dave Clark of the two-time defending champions. “They (WIU) have pretty much the same people and we have a stronger team this year.”

Clark said he is expecting big performances from everyone, but is looking for Mike Wheeler, Steve Sanders and Dave Talbot to play a big part at the tourney.

“I think we’ve got three pretty good entries for each event,” Clark said, “that depth might be enough to add up in our favor even if we don’t take a first.”

The men will carry their 3-0 dual meet record to Wheaton.

The women will take a 3-1 dual meet record to the invite in an attempt to challenge last year’s defending champion, Northern Michigan.

The preliminaries and finals will take place at 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. Friday, and 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. Saturday.