The atmosphere by the pool at the Freeman Athletic Center was electric. With the help of the crowd, both the men’s and women’s swim teams enjoyed success in Saturday’s meet against the Clark University Cougars, the Colby-Sawyer College Chargers, and the Connecticut College Camels. The women’s team finished the meet deadlocked at 150 points with the Camels, and defeated Clark 200-99 and Colby-Sawyer by a score of 190-107. The men clobbered the Camels by a score of 195-86, beat Clark 181-90, and handeled Colby-Sawyer 150-98.
Most notable among the Cardinals’ efforts was the fact that the girl’s 200-yard freestyle relay clinched the meet against the Camels. The victorious team of Eliza Jones ’07, Laurel Daen ’05, Alyson Cluck ’07 and Joanna Tice ’07 broke an eleven-year-old school record in the process with a time of 1:42.42.
“We just finished our toughest training time over winter break,” said Head Coach Mary Bolich. “They’re extremely tired right now, but what was really nice today to see is [that] as tired as they are, they pushed through and swam the fastest they have all season.”
Throughout the meet, Connecticut College seemed to be just mere seconds faster. Fortunately, the Cardinal girls always gave the Camels a tight race and kept the meet close enough for a chance to win at the end.
“It’s not really swimming as a team; it’s more like swimming for the team. You’re swimming individually for yourself, but you also have to swim to place because every person’s race counts,” said Stephanie Lasby ’06, who finished second in the 1000- yard freestyle and the 200-yard butterfly with times of 11:04.67 and 2:19.23, respectively.
On the men’s side of the pool, Ben Byers ’07 continued his impressive run, having won nine of his last ten races heading into the meet. Saturday, he triumphed in both his individual events, the 500 and 1000-yard freestyle with times of 4:50.52 and 9:40.05, respectively. He dominated both events; Byers was the only swimmer to finish under five minutes in the 500 and the only one to go less than ten minutes in the 1000. In the longer race, he finished nearly thirty-six seconds ahead of the second-place finisher, the Camels’ Sam Garner.
“There aren’t a lot of great distancers on Conn,” said Byers. “They’re a real even, deep team, but they don’t have any stars. [Against] teams like Amherst and Williams, we had much closer races.”
Byers was also part of the winning team in the 200-yard medley relay with Dan Devine ’06, Josh Tanz ’06, and Co-Captain Tom Cleveland ’05, with a time of 1:40.49.
Men’s Captain, Nick Blondin ’04, finished second in his two races, the 100 and 200-yard breaststroke. In both cases, he was about a second behind winner Bob Kyne of the Camels. Swimming in adjacent lanes, Blondin and Kyne showed great sportsmanship by shaking hands after a close finish in the 200 with Kyne prevailing by barely more than half a second.
Additional highlights included Cardinal swimmers finishing 1-2-3 in the men’s 50-yard freestyle. Cleveland, Adam Chamberlain ’07, and John Haley ’07 finished within 1.1 seconds of each other with respective times of 22.07, 23.06 and 23.14.
The swimming Cards performed well in spite of a difficult stretch over the last month.
“What that’s a great indication of is [that] when we rest for the NESCAC Championships in about a month from now, how fast they swam tired is a great indication of how fast they’ll swim rested,” Bolich said.
They sure did not look as tired as their coach said. With luck and rest, the team will again appear fresh when they swim this Saturday at home in the Freeman Athletic Center pool against NESCAC rivals Colby, Bowdoin, and Trinity. Having already competed against the Cardinals, the Trinity portion of the meet will be solely exhibition.
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