Even though a fire alarm before the second heat of the men’s 500-yard freestyle delayed the meet for about ten minutes, the Cardinals’ swim teams remained on a steady course. In front of a spillover crowd on Senior Appreciation Day, the men defeated both the Colby Mules and the Bowdoin Polar Bears by scores of 163-124 and 162-120, respectively. The women split their two meets, swimming past Bowdoin 167-132, but fell to Colby by a score of 164.5-130.5. Trinity College also participated, but was not scored against Wesleyan due to previous competition.
The Cardinals swam in honor of the six seniors on the team: Nick “Blondo” Blondin, Katie Schoendorf, Mosah Fernandez-Goodman, Zoe Goldberg, Bryn Sewell and Anna Teeter.
In the men’s group, Ben Byers ’07 continued to dominate his distance races. In the 1650-yard freestyle he finished with a time of 16:28.42, over a minute ahead of the second-place finisher. His other distance race was the 500-yard free, which took 4:51.84, three seconds ahead of the runner-up, Rob Mitchell ’06. Unbeknownst to most of those in attendance, Byers was swimming with an ear infection.
In the 200-yard breaststroke, co-captain Blondin finished third in the race, but his points counted as if he had won because the first two finishers were both Trinity swimmers.
“We barely beat both of them (Colby and Bowdoin) last year, so they were hungry for wins. I feel overall everyone’s swimming pretty soundly,” said Blondin.
Other notable performances from the men’s team were from Dan Devine ’06, who finished second in both of his individual events, the 200-yard freestyle and the100-yard free with times of 1:48.25 and 48.99 respectively. The latter was just five hundredths of a second behind the winner, Bowdoin’s Mike Long. Devine also contributed to the win in the 200-yard free relay, swimming in a team with Josh Tanz ’06, John Haley ’07, and co-captain Tom Cleveland ’05.
The Wes women also performed well in their races. Joanna Tice ’07 broke her own team record in the 50-yard free by finishing in 24.89 seconds. Her relay team with Eliza Jones ’07, Laurel Daen ’06, and Alyson Cluck ’07, which had broken the school record in the 200-yard free relay last week, won its event in 1:42.54, just twelve hundredths of a second off their own mark.
“[They] nearly took down the school record,” said tri-captain Schoendorf. “The team comraderie is the best I’ve seen in four years, and that’s just an amazing thing to be a part of. The stakes are high. We’ve all trained with each other, so how everyone does reflects on how we’ve done as teammates.”
The women’s 500-yard freestyle was also won by the Cardinals as Chris Andrews ’07 took the race in 5:17.28, about six seconds ahead of the next-fastest competitor. She, like Byers, was suffering from an ear infection.
Head Coach Mary Bolich was very pleased with the performance of both squads despite some unusual circumstances.
“We’re getting into our last dual meet where things should be pretty well set for the conference championships,” said Bolich. “We have some sickness, especially on the women’s side; we had quite a few women who swam in one meet and weren’t able to finish the meet or kind of sucked it up and swam in all their events, but didn’t quite swim up to their potential. But overall I think we swam faster as a team.”
After next Saturday’s competition at the Coast Guard Academy, the women have two weeks off before they compete in the NESCAC Championships here at Freeman February 20-22. The men head to Bowdoin for their conference championships the following week.
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