GAMBIER, Ohio -- With a history that already includes 24 North Coast Athletic Conference (NCAC) championship titles, the Kenyon College men's swimming and diving team will be focused on gaining another title when it travels to Denison University for this season's four-day championship.

Things get underway Wednesday with two relay competitions at the Big Red's Trumbull Aquatics Center. The following three days will include the two diving events and the rest of the swimming events, which will play out with preliminary heats at 9:30 a.m. and final heats at 6 p.m.

In last year's championship, the outcome was decided in the last race, which Denison won to edge Kenyon by five points in the final team standings. With no championship in 2021 due to the pandemic, Kenyon last claimed the crown in the 2020 season, snapping a Big Red streak at 11 straight titles. Kenyon and Denison are the only two programs to win NCAC championships. Since the first conference meet in 1985, the Owls amassed 24 titles, while the Big Red own 13 titles.

The Owls will go after the 2023 title with a strong squad of seniors, including Bryan Fitzgerald, who was voted the 2022 NCAC Swimmer of the Year. Fitzgerald gears up for the 2023 championship with top-five conference times in the 200-, 500-, and 1,650-yard freestyles, as well as in the 200- and 400-yard individual medleys. Last season he won the NCAC title in the 500-yard freestyle, the 400-yard individual and as a part of Kenyon's 800-yard freestyle relay team.

Senior classmates, Spencer Pruett and Luis Weekes, should also play big roles for Kenyon and, like Fitzgerald, are defending event champions. Last season, Pruett took first place in the 200-yard backstroke and Weekes was first in the 100-yard breaststroke.Pruett currently has the conference's second-fastest time this season in the 200-yard backstroke and the fourth-fastest in the 100-yard backstroke. Weekes, the 2020 NCAC Swimmer of the Year, currently holds the NCAC's top time in the 200-yard breaststroke and the second-best time in the 100-yard breaststroke.

Kenyon's other returning individual-event champions are juniors Israel Zavaleta and Yurii Kosian. Zavaleta swept the diving competitions last season and was named 2022 NCAC Diver of the Year. He'll be backed on the boards by Owen Peterson, Mason Fishell and Drew Albrecht, who was the 2020 NCAC Diver of the Year. Kosian took the NCAC 200-yard freestyle title last season and will enter the upcoming championship with top times in that 200 race, as well as the 100- and 200-yard backstrokes.

Other Owl swimmers that will enter competition with a top-seeded time include Cherantha De Silva in the 50-yard freestyle, Marko Krtinic in the 100- and 200-yard butterfly events and Djordje Dragojlovic in the 100-yard freestyle.

Additionally, the Owls own the conference's season-best times in all five relay events.