The long and grueling regular season is coming to an end for the No. 3 men’s and No. 2 women’s Longhorn swim teams.

 After a year filled with progress and success, head coach Carol Capitani loves the look of her team heading into its final regular season meet with TCU. She said her squad is trending upward as championship season approaches.

 “You always want to be in the mix at the end of the year,” Capitani said. “Just to build a team from the very beginning and that’s been the story is just that you know every year you don’t know what’s going to happen but we want to be in the race, we want to be in the running you know to do something special.”

 The Longhorn men, despite being reigning back-to-back NCAA champions, enter the meet ranking third in the nation. And as senior Clark Smith said, a three-peat is very much on the team’s radar.

 “Obviously we want to win again,” Smith said. “We kind of take that day by day, putting in as much effort as we can. I guess this year we kind of are considered underdogs, not really expected to win it.”

 Adding to the emotions of last week’s Senior Day meet at home, the final regular season event also looks to be another emotional send off for the burnt orange. Head coach Eddie Reese said this senior class is crucial to the success of the team.

 “The tough part is, since they’ve been here every year, the training has gotten harder and they put up with it,” Reese said. “They’ve helped me keep everyone else in line. We count on our seniors a lot.”

 The Longhorns resume competition on Friday at 4 p.m. at the University Recreation Center in Fort Worth.