The schedule for the 2021-22 Lake Forest College swimming and diving teams was released on Monday.
The Foresters will open at Carthage College on Saturday, October 30. It will be the eighth consecutive full season that began with the Foresters and Firebirds facing off in a dual meet.
Lake Forest's first home meet will be an Alumni Day contest with visiting Monmouth College on November 6. Former Forester swimmers, including two of the team's, will be honored at the contest.
The team's next three meets will be invitationals, beginning with the Monmouth Invite on Saturday, November 13. The Foresters will also compete in the University of Chicago's Phoenix Fall Classic November 20-21 and return to Kenosha, Wisconsin, for the Carthage Classic December 2-4.
Lake Forest will once again travel to southern California and compete at Soka University during the squad's training trip in early January.
The next three Saturdays will also feature meets that have appeared on the Foresters' schedule for several years. As they have in every full season starting in 1998, Wheaton College, Hope College, and host Kalamazoo College will gather for what is now called the Illinois-Michigan Quadrangular. Lake Forest started competing in a double-dual meet with Lawrence University and the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater in 2015 and it is Whitewater's turn to host. The team's 17th dual meet with Illinois Institute of Technology since 2001 will follow on January 29 and also serve as Senior Day and Parents Day.
As a final tuneup before the conference meet the Forester swimmers will travel to St. Norbert College while the divers compete in the UIC Diving Invitational on February 5.
The Lake Forest women are the defending Midwest Conference champions and will look to defend that title at Grinnell College February 18-20. The men have finished second at each of the last five conference meets after capturing back-to-back crowns in 2014 and 2015.
For those who qualify, the NCAA Division III Regional Diving Meet will take place the next weekend and the NCAA Division III Championships will be held at the IU Natatorium at IUPUI in Indianapolis March 16-19.
The 2021-22 season will be the 14th for Vadim Tashlitsky '00 as the program's head coach. The Forester men and women have combined for a 98-64-1 dual meet record and both squads have claimed a pair of league titles during his tenure.