With the season quickly coming to a close for the men’s swim team, the Cardinals look to Ben Byers ’08 to lead them to a strong performance at the New England Small College Athletic Championships, being held this weekend at Williams College.
“We’d like to move up spot or two in the rankings,” Byers said. “Middlebury won’t be competing so we’d like to get third.”
In order to place that highly, the Cardinals will have to outscore the Amherst Lord Jeffs, who defeated the Cardinals 156-123 in an early season dual meet.
However, the Cardinals’ chances of knocking off their Little Three rivals are helped by the fact that Cardinals have many more star swimmers, such as Byers and Butterfly specialist Josh Tanz ’06. Tanz, who excels in the sprint events, and Byers, who can hold a fast pace for a seemingly limitless amount of time, provide a ying and yang for the Cardinals. The Cardinals will be looking to veterans of the team, such as Tanz and senior captains Rob Mitchell ’06 and Dan Devine ’06, for leadership, with younger, but established, members of the team trying to provide 50 plus points individually as well.
For Byers, this kind of point total is certainly possible. Byers, who was a Division III All-American last year in the 1650-yard Freestyle event and also made Nationals in the 200 and 500-yard Freestyles, will try to somehow improve upon his performance at the NESCAC meet last year, when he scored 90 points individually (96 is the highest possible individual score) and helped the Cardinals to a 7th Place finish in the 800 Yard Freestyle Relay. However, victory will not come easily in any of Byers’ events said.
“It’s probably going to take a NESCAC record to win the 500, 1000 and 1650,” Byers said.
Challenging Byers will be Williams’ Ben Spinelli, who has been an All-American in the long distance swim events as well.
“It wouldn’t surprise me if we both break [the record] in the 1000 and 1650,” Byers said of his rivals. “It just depends on who can go faster [and] it’s going to come down to who wants it more.”
However, it is clear that Byers is unafraid. Byers has won all 22 of his career dual meet races of 1000 yards or longer.
“[Byers is] inspiring,” said Seth Murphy ’09. “He refuses to lose.”
Tanz too, will be shooting for a big performance at the conference meet. He has the third fastest time in the 50-yard Butterfly and around 10th in both the 100-yard and 200-yard Butterfly events. However, last year Tanz had the biggest race of his career at the NESCAC meet, coming in 4th in the 100 Yard Butterfly. A repeat is definitely not out of the question.
Clearly, for Tanz and the rest of this year’s Cardinal seniors, this weekend’s conference meet means a lot. First and foremost, for the swimmers of the class of 2006, this will be their final meet unless they qualify for the National Championships. The importance of this meet is even greater for those senior swimmers who are on the bubble of making the National meet.
These swimmers are Tanz and long distance Freestyle specialist Mitchell, who has one of the top times in the 1000-yard and 1650-yard Freestyle events and is hoping to have a big weekend at Williams. The past four years have been a journey for Mitchell, who began as an Intermediate Medley specialist, swimming freestyle, backstroke, butterfly and breaststroke, before deciding to switch to the long-distance freestyle events. Over the past three years Mitchell has improved tremendously aerobically, becoming stronger and stronger in collegiate swimming’s longest events. This weekend, he and the rest of the Cardinals will be trying to prove their mettle. Byers will be going for three victories, Tanz and Mitchell will be shooting for times fast enough to get them to Nationals, and the Cardinals as a whole will be aiming for a third place finish in the Conference.
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