Manhattan ? Don’t expect Free State or Lawrence High’s girls swim teams to compete for a state title this weekend.

But city swimmers will be gunning for individual crowns.

In fact, there could be more than one title set up when preliminaries kick off at 2 p.m. today at the Kansas State University Natatorium. Finals begin at 12:30 p.m. Saturday.

“State’s a little more intense. You need a couple of really fast swimmers or you need a lot of swimmers that are qualified in a lot of events,” LHS coach Ryan Adams said. “But I think we’re going to surprise some people and hopefully ourselves.”

The Lions, who finished 10th last season, qualified 10 swimmers and two divers. Senior Sarah Marlow, third last year in the 500-yard freestyle, will be in the hunt again this year, as will sophomore Melissa Little, who finished sixth.

Their main competition? FSHS sophomore Ashley Jackson, who beat both at the Sunflower League meet May 10.

She and freshman Ashley Robinson represent the Firebirds’ best shots at individual titles among their 10 qualified swimmers.

“We hope to place better than we did last year,” FSHS coach Jama Crady said. “We have more girls going in more individual events, so we should place higher than 13th.”

Crady has high hopes for all three FSHS relay teams — the 400 freestyle, 200 freestyle and 200 medley — provided they relax. At the league meet, the 200 freestyle was disqualified because of a false start.

So Crady reminded her swimmers to concentrate on the race and not the gun.

“I told them, I would rather sacrifice a third of a second for a start than risk a DQ,” she said.

Lawrence High divers Ellie Lloyd and Meredith West and FSHS senior Laura Nelson have diving preliminaries at 7 tonight. Adams said both Lions could medal, but was more excited about the prospect of West, a freshman, and Lloyd, a junior, gaining valuable experience for the future.

As for the Firebirds, Crady said her swimmers were ready, if this week’s practices were any indication.

They’ve tapered — dropped their yardage and total practice workload — and displayed lots of excess energy.

Now, they just have to focus it.

“You have to expect to swim faster,” Crady said. “You have to buy into the fact that you’re going to swim faster. They’ve put in the time, they’ve put in the work, they just need to go out and do it.”