UIC will make its regular season debut at Northwestern Saturday morning.

The meet, which has traditionally been an early-season test in recent years, will give the Flames a chance to swim against a Big Ten opponent – two in the case of the women, who will be joined in the pool by Illinois.

It will be the beginning of a busy fall season, which includes four meets in the next five weeks.  Dual meets against Horizon League foes Milwaukee and Oakland, and a multi-day invitational at IUPUI, will keep the Flames active until their winter training break.

Both of UIC's opponents have a dual meet under their belts already.  Northwestern swam against Indiana, and Illinois topped Indiana State, last weekend.  The Flames held their intrasquad exhibition Red vs. Blue meet at the beginning of the month, and will look to raise the bar on the times they recorded.

A veteran Flames women's squad is coming off a program-best Horizon League runner-up finish.  Seniors Lauren Johnson, Christina Neri, Lizzie Zeller, and Cydney Liebenberg will all be counted on to score points in multiple events.  A loaded junior class includes two-time conference champion Lilly Culp.

"For our women, the sky is the limit," Tim Loeffler said.  "In terms of who we have coming back, we lost a great captain to graduation but virtually all of our points in last year's conference meet are back.  It's such a deep team.  As coaches, we're just excited to see how far they can go."

On the men's side, UIC will look to a large underclassman group to provide the bulk of the team's points.  "We have just three seniors, Josh Dellorto, Kyle Lewarchick, and Felix LaFortune," Loeffler said, "all of whom will be important scorers for us.  But the sophomore class, which is going into their first real season of fall racing, and our freshmen will have to do their part.  The good news is that some of our freshmen are already putting up times that would score points at conference."

Live scoring of Saturday's meet, which starts at 11 a.m., will be available via the link in the blue box above.