Who knows if boarding a rickety yellow school bus and heading out of town for the Sunflower League swim meet would do anything to slow the city swimmers down?

It won’t matter this year. That’s a guarantee.

This year’s two-day meet is back at the Lawrence Indoor Aquatic Center on Free State High’s campus, which means the Lawrence High and Free State swimmers won’t have to log 45 minutes on a bus to head to Johnson County and a hostile pool like last year. The meet starts with preliminaries at 5 p.m. today.

“I think it makes a difference in the fact that we’ll have home support,” FSHS coach Jama Crady said. “We’ll have some fans there to cheer us on.”

Is that good or bad?

Depends on whom you ask. Lawrence’s Axah McCalla, for one, thinks it only can help.

“It’s definitely nice,” McCalla said. “Our girls feed off the community support.”

But ask Cambry McNabb, Free State’s state-qualifying diver, and the vibe’s a little different.

“It makes me kind of nervous,” McNabb said with a laugh. “It’s nice to know that people support you and will come to watch. But it terrifies me.”

To be fair, McNabb’s work as a diver is on center stage, while the swimmers are racing seven other competitors underwater.

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Regardless, McNabb feels being at her home pool gives her a crucial edge — even if it comes with stage fright.

“The divers have a home-pool advantage because we know the boards and can predict what’s going to happen,” McNabb said. “As far as the swimmers go, I assume they probably do because they’re comfortable with the pool.”

Both LHS and Free State bring strong squads into the 12-team meet, and both teams are shooting to place in the top four. Olathe East and Shawnee Mission East have strong teams, too, and surely will make a run at the league crown. Shawnee Mission East won the team title last year.

“I’d like to finish in the top three,” Crady said. “I think it’d be a good show of where we finish at state. If we finish high at league, we should be relatively OK at state.”

And as always, junior Ashley Jackson and sophomore Ashley Robinson should be big point-winners for the Firebirds.

Robinson will compete in the 200 individual medley and 500 freestyle. She won the 200 IM last year at league and won state in the 500.

Jackson, who’s dealing with a shoulder injury, isn’t likely to go all-out this weekend, though she will compete.

Lawrence, meanwhile, can expect big performances from senior Melissa Farve and juniors Julia Szabo and Melissa Little. All three had solid league meets a year ago.

The diving finals for the meet will start at 9 a.m. Saturday at the LIAC. The swimming finals will be later in the day.