THE STARTING BLOCK
• NM State will travel to Las Vegas this weekend to take part in the UNLV Winter Invitational – a three-day event at Jim Reitz Pool
• This upcoming meet will is set to get underway on Saturday morning with competition concluding on Monday afternoon. Each day, prelims are scheduled to begin at 10:30 a.m. PT while finals will start at 5 p.m.
• For diving, prelims will begin at 1 p.m. and finals are set for 8 p.m. during the Saturday and Sunday portions of the meet.
• The weekend event will also mark just the second time this season that the Aggies' full team will participate in a multi-team event after competing against Colorado State and Colorado Mines over two months ago.
• Including NM State, 10 programs will swim and dive this weekend as the Aggies will take to the pool against student-athletes from UCLA, CBU, Cal Poly, New Mexico, Northern Arizona, Lewis & Clark, Cal Poly and Fresno Pacific.
• A live stream of the weekend meet will be available via YouTube at this link.
• Championship scoring will be utilized at the Aggies' final event of 2022 with swimmers capable of scoring in six individual events and on all relays. Each team can only score two relays per event.
 
Scoring for individual events is as follows:
Championship A Finals: 20-17-16-15-14-13-12-11; Consolation B Finals: 9-7-6-5-4-3-2-1
 
Scoring for relay events is as follows:
40-34-32-30-28-26-24-22-18-14-12-10-8-6-4-2

LAST TIME OUT | NM State 180, UTPB 94 | 12.3.22 | RECAP
• In their final home meet of the calendar year, the Aggies picked up a 180-94 over visiting UT Permian Basin as 10 individuals earned first-place finishes across 14 events, including four freshmen.
• The quartet of Maude Boily-Dufour, Aimee Burton, Rachel Ponte and Elizabeth Cervantes-Vanderlugt combined to start the day with a win for the Aggies in the 200-yard medley relay – finishing with a time of 1:47.61.
• First-year Aggie Jamie Puhalski claimed the first win of her collegiate career as she finished in front of the pack in the 1000 free with a time of 11:07.83.
• Fellow freshman Naomi Slee followed Puhalski with a win in the 200 free (1:54.36) to continue the strong start to her debut season. Slee also turned in a second win in the 100 free (54.31).
• The team of Burton, Cervantes-Vanderlugt, Kira Brownell and Lindsay Puhalski concluded the day with a win in the 200 free relay (1:38.04).

QUOTABLE | HEAD COACH RICK PRATT
"It's been a great semester for our young team and getting a chance to get to swim in a three-day invite at this point will be a great experience to see how our team responds to all the hard work they've put in. There will be a large field attending and some great competition. Getting to see everyone swim more events spread out over the duration of the weekend with a little more rest will be exciting to see.
 
"Our team has really managed the semester of training well with their academics and everything going on. We're going to be focused on our race strategies, having great energy and hopefully having some fun. It should be a great experience to help us move into the spring semester."