Oakland University???s men???s and women???s swimming and diving teams will be the host to eight different schools this weekend when they host the National Independent Conference (NIC) Championships at the OU Aquatics Center. The meet begins Wednesday, Feb. 26th and wraps up on Saturday, March 1st. The women???s team are defending champions of the meet while the men???s team will be looking to better their third place performance in 2002. Both the men and women???s teams already captured conference titles in the 2002-03 season and will be looking to capture their second. In early December, Oakland played host to the Mid-Con Conference Championships in which both Golden Grizzlies teams won easily. Although the teams compete against a tough schedule throughout the duration of the season, the NIC Championships is the meet the Grizzlies look most forward too and is the meet that requires the swimmers to be in top performance condition. Eight different schools across the country will be traveling to Rochester, Michigan this year for the 2003 NICs. The teams participating in men???s competition other than Oakland are Florida Atlantic, Denver, Western Kentucky, Hawaii, Louisiana-Monroe, and last year???s reigning champs, Southern Methodist. On the women???s side, there will be five different teams competing for the NIC title. Among these teams include Oakland, Florida Atlantic, Northern Arizona, Western Kentucky, and North Florida. The competition begins at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, and continues with prelims at 11 a.m. and finals starting at 6:30 p.m. Thursday thru Saturday. Real time results can be followed throughout the entire meet on the ougrizzlies.com website under the swimming and diving homepages.