Nationally ranked men's and women's squads from Florida, Texas A&M, and Virginia are among the 13 teams attending this weekend's Boilermaker Challenge. This two-day event is the biggest regular-season meet held at the Boilermaker Aquatic Center in its short four-year history.

Women's teams from Michigan, Texas, UCLA, Tennessee, plus the Auburn diving crew also will be competing at this invitational-style scoring meet. Every team, including both Purdue squads, is ranked among the top 25 by the CSCAA.

"This is arguably the biggest meet in the country this weekend, and it's the biggest meet we've ever hosted outside the conference championships," said Purdue men's coach Dan Ross. "There's going to be over 200 swimmers, plus 40 divers. It's going to be very exciting."

With Purdue preparing to host the NCAA Championships in March, the women's teams viewed this meet as an excellent opportunity to experience the facility. A majority of the team's signed up quickly, which helped seal a minor hole in the meet's format.

The original concept, which was crafted by Ross with Florida coach Gregg Troy and Virginia coach Mark Bernardino, was to have one team (men's and women's) from each of the major conferences (Big 10, Pac-10, ACC, SEC) to compete in a dual-meet format. This plan fell through when no men's Pac-10 team expressed enough interest.

Regardless of the format, Purdue's men's and women's teams will have their hands full, but as Ross said in the preseason when discussing this year's schedule, "If you want to be the best, you have to beat the best."