Ohio swimmers Kim van Selm and Hollie Bonewit have been thinking all year of spending March 18 to March 20 in Athens.Athens, Ga., that is.

The University of Georgia at Athens hosts the 1999 NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships. Van Selm and Bonewit each qualified to compete in two events. They are the first swimmers to represent Ohio in the meet since 1997, when Lisa MacNicol and Line Nyman swam for the Bobcats.

Van Selm will swim the 200 and 500 freestyle, and Bonewit will compete in the 400 individual medley and 200 breaststroke.

In the 200, van Selm is the 15 seed in a field of 57 competitors. She is 46th in a field of 50 for the 500 free.

Bonewit is the 30th seed in the 400 IM, out of 32 swimmers. She is 26th out of 41 in the 200 breaststroke.

Ohio head coach Greg Werner knew van Selm was in the NCAA following the Mid-American Conference Championships, even though she battled a sinus infection and the flu during the meet. Bonewit had a chance after her performance at the MAC championships, he thought.

After Bonewit missed the cut in the 400 IM by two tenths of a second last year, she concentrated on advancing in the event this year. Even though the cutoff time improved this year, Bonewit did too. She dropped seven tenths of a second from her time, Werner said.

Werner has the women in their normal training cycles to prepare for the meet.

"We're staying with our normal routine," he said. "They know on certain days we're doing IM training or secondary training or primary training. But now we know what events they'll be competing in, so we can specialize in those.

"Kim will be doing 200 to 500 type yardage, and Hollie will still be doing IM, but 400 IM's instead of 200's and 200 breaststrokes instead of 100 breaststrokes. Kim will be on a little longer taper than Hollie will, basically because Kim had a much shorter taper before MAC's."

Tapering is a decrease in training in order to build up energy for a big meet, such as the NCAA's.

No type of preparation can prevent van Selm and Bonewit from being a little nervous about the meet, which Ohio head coach Greg Werner said is arguably the fastest competition in the world.

"It's more competitive that the Olympics," he said. "You have a lot of very strong international swimmers who come over to study and train, as well as the top Americans. It is such an elite meet and a hard meet to qualify for that basically everyone there is a stud."

Van Selm doesn't know what to expect.

"I've never swam in such a big meet," she said. "I've heard from people back home that it's bigger than the Olympics. In that way I'm scared, but I'm also very excited."