MARQUETTE — Five members of the men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams from Northern Michigan University have packed their bags for southern climes in Florida.

Sounds like a nice Christmas trip, eh? That may be so, but it’s also a business trip as that quintet joins Wildcats head coach Heidi Voigt for the College National Open Water Championships held by the College Swimming & Diving Coaches Association of America.

The event will be held Sunday morning in the enclosed Atlantic Ocean waters of Biscayne Bay near Miami and hosted by Florida International University.

Nearly 240 participants from around the country in all divisions of the NCAA, plus the NAIA, converge in southern Florida for an event that kicks off at 8 a.m. with the men’s five-kilometer race, followed by the women’s same-length race at 10 a.m.

Traveling there from NMU are women’s swimmers Anika Wright and Caitlin Aarseth, and the men’s Javier Pena Reyes, Zachary Billotte and Wyatt Dickman.

The Wildcats will have a practice session from 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday a day ahead of the event. Athletes can swim three laps around the course for the 5K distance.

Last year, Northern also send a contingent here, but the event was canceled due to bad weather.

Back in 2022, NMU’s Ondrej Zach, a long-distance specialist, just missed repeating as men’s champion as he was runner-up by just over three seconds in the 5K (3.1-mile) course in 54:40.87.

Winner Raul Brice of Mars Hill (North Carolina) clocked 54:37.54, while third-place Ido Gal of the University of Cincinnati did it in 54:45.46.

About eight months before the 2022 event, Zach won the NCAA Division II national title in the 1,650-yard freestyle in 15:09.55, and in September 2021, he won the CSCAA open water title in, of all places Kansas, in 56:10.6.

Information compiled by Journal Sports Editor Steve Brownlee. His email address is sbrownlee@miningjournal.net.