"It'll be nice working with proper villains again."
— Don Cheadle, "Ocean's Eleven"

After a couple of weekends dominating overmatched opponents in double dual meets, the Franklin swimming and diving teams get an opportunity to punch within their own weight class again starting on Friday — and they're looking forward to it.

The Gail Pebworth Invitational at Wabash pits the Grizzlies against some of the top teams in the Midwest — including the DePauw women, currently ranked 25th nationally — and it will serve as a midseason checkpoint of sorts for the swimmers, who won't be fully tapered (as they will be for the HCAC Championships in February) but will still be primed to go fast.

"Just throwing on tech suits and feeling a little rested is just fun," Griz coach Zach Rayce said. "And that's what we're going to preach; if you don't like how you swam in prelims or you don't like how you swam on the day prior, fix it. Just have fun. ... I'll worry about the results; I'll worry about everything else. Just enjoy swimming, enjoy swimming with each other. I think throughout the year so far, I've been seeing more of that, of just having fun and having fun racing. And it helps when you're getting wins, especially leading up to a championship meet."

Franklin has been getting wins in convincing fashion. The women's team won its last four duals against Hanover, Manchester, Transylvania and Pikeville by an average of 159 points, while the men beat those teams by an average of almost 101. The competition this weekend will be considerably tougher, but that's exactly what the Grizzlies want as they try to inch their way closer to NCAA Division III qualifying times.

On the men's side, Zachary Jackson-Blaine hopes to nail down an NCAA B standard in the 50-yard freestyle; he swam a time of 20.33 seconds at last season's HCAC meet, and the B cut time for this season is 20.36. For the women, Celeste Hollis (100 and 200 butterfly) and Kat Lundy (100 and 200 backstroke) have both put up best times within shouting distance of the cuts, and they'll be trying to reach those standards or at least come close at Wabash.

The Grizzlies' best chance at an NCAA standard this weekend is probably in the women's 400 medley relay. The quartet of Lundy, Avery Tomlinson, Hollis and Petal Sloan swam a 4:00.25 at the Battle in the Bluegrass meet last month at Centre, a time that ranked seventh nationally at the time (it's currently 23rd). Suited and rested, the group should be able to get itself within range of the school record time of 3:50.40 set by Lundy, Caileigh McCafferty, Hollis and Sloan last year; the NCAA B cut of 3:49.72 isn't far beyond that.

Doing well on that relay is of particular importance to the women's team after it was disqualified during last season's HCAC meet, undercutting any chance the Grizzlies had at an NCAA appearance.

"Last year, getting disqualified in both medleys, it didn't sit well with them," Rayce said. "They've taken it really serious; you've kind of seen the switch flip of, 'No one's going to be close to us.' Now DePauw's got a really, really good medley relay that's going to push us, and I wouldn't be upset if both of us got B cuts and we both moved up the rankings, just to boost competition.

"Obviously going after the record is step one. ... If we're lucky enough to get the B cut, then we'll find a new goal later on."

Nearly three months still remain between this meet and the HCAC Championships, and the NCAA meet is a month after that, but this checkpoint meet is likely the fastest that the Grizzlies will go between now and then. Having not seen his team rested or suited up yet this fall, Rayce isn't totally sure what to expect — but everything he's seen leading up to this point has him feeling optimistic.

"This past meet with Transy really helped solidify a lot of thoughts of where we are in the taper process," he said. "Still working on a couple of small things for (this) week, but just trying to work our way up in the rankings as high as we can get and hit that full taper later on, but I feel like we're in a great spot. Obviously, time will tell, but I'm happy with where we are."

Click here for a live video feed of the swimming portion of the meet throughout the weekend, or here to watch the diving competition.