The Troy Tigers Sharks have hit the road to Birmingham to take part in the State Swim Meet at the Crossplex.

The Tiger Sharks had 22 swimmers qualify for the event during the district meet earlier this month.

The Tiger Sharks will arrive in Birmingham in the morning and, following a warmup swim, will begin competing in the afternoon.

“For some of these kids, this is their first time at state,” said head coach Nicklaus Chrysson. “This will be a fun experience for them.”

The Tiger Sharks, after spending the summer swimming against local teams, turn their attention towards the state’s best.

“The veterans know what to expect from the competition,” Chyrsson said. “The rookies are going to be kind of enlightened. I just expect them to go out there and do their best. We have trained all summer and they know what to do. They have trained morning and night the last two weeks so I feel confident that they know what to do. It’s just going out there and keeping them from getting too nervous.”

Just like in any other athletic event, the setting of the competition plays a big role. Although the length of the races will be the same, each pool has the potential to offer different obstacles than others.

“Sometimes the flags are different,” Chrysson said. “You have to pay attention while doing backstrokes because you can’t really tell where the wall is. You have to look at the flags to know where to turn. Some of those may be placed a little differently.”

Some pools can garner a reputation of being either slow or fast.

“When we go to Andalusia, that pool was built in the 1950’s and it is a slow pool,” Chrysson said. “When you go somewhere like the Birmingham Crossplex, that is a state-of-the-art pool. You’re definitely swimming in a different atmosphere.”

The Tiger Sharks will have an opportunity to feel out the pool on Friday during their warmup swim at the Crossplex.

“We will get down there and swim for about 20 minutes and warm up,” Chrysson said. “They will kind of see how it’s going to be. It will kind of mentally prepare them.”

Short of finishing near the top, a successful meet for coach Chrysson will be determined by how many of his swimmers improved on their time.

“A successful meet I would say would be going out there and cutting time for our individual swimmers.”

The 22 swimmers that qualified for state are Hunter Ross, Brea Swindall, Emma Bradley, Bryan Campbell, Landon Campbell, Kevin Wang, Kirill Kobelev, Addison Bruner, Jack Harbin, Bryce Tatum, Nicholaus Slobodchikoff, Nicholaus, Simmons, Dallas Daughtry, Jeffery Knotts, Evan Zhao, Alex Cordle, Eric Cordle, Isaac Cordle, Sawyer Gross, Ben Freeman, Daniel Niu and Andrew Dixon.