Winning 13 of 16 events, the Cardinal women’s swimming and diving team handily beat the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, 185-112, in their last regular season match-up before the NESCAC championships. Only three races in Saturday’s home meet ended without a Cardinal victory, a fitting outcome for a team that hadn’t competed at home in almost two months.
“We’re just really comfortable being at our home pool,” said co-captain Amanda Shapiro ’08. “We had some unbelievable performances. All the training paid off, our heads were in it, and we really all stepped up.”
The women displayed their dominance early, winning the opening event, the 200-yard medley relay, with a comfortable 5.56 seconds to spare. Relays are a great indication of a team’s overall strength, according to Shapiro. Winning the first relay set the tone of the meet, and Wesleyan’s come-from-behind victory in the final event, the 400-yard freestyle relay, reaffirmed the Cardinals’ command of the pool.
The largest margin of victory of the day came from Kate Haring ’10, who finished first in the 1000-yard freestyle, 28.48 seconds before the next competitor. With Haring’s win and a first place finish in the 500-yard freestyle from Caitlin Bethlahmy ’09, the Cards captured the long-distance freestyle titles but failed to do the same in the short and mid-distance events. The women’s only losses were all due to one Coast Guard swimmer in the 50, 100, and 200-yard freestyle.
Several of the women achieved personal or season bests on Saturday, including Bethlahmy in the 100-yard backstroke, co-captain Kate Krems ’08 in the 100-yard butterfly, breaking one minute, and Lauren Cruz ’09 in the three-meter diving event. Bethlahmy and Krems placed first in their races, while Cruz took third, even with it being her first time competing from three meters.
The dive team performed especially well against Coast Guard, sweeping the three-meter event and having two top finishes off the one-meter board.
“We matched up really well against Coast Guard,” said Jessica Houghton ’09, who won both diving events. “I think it was the best diving all year for a lot of people.”
With the final regular season meet completed, all of the team’s attention turns to the conference championship, to be held Feb. 16-18 at Williams College.
“We’ll be fine-tuning our race fields and focusing on detail work,” said head coach Mary Bolich. “Training will continue, with daily speed sets to build confidence, but also with plenty of time for rest and recovery.”
The Cards’ toughest competition at the NESCACs could come from Bowdoin, a team Bolich feels her swimmers match up well against.
“But Hamilton could also be interesting,” she said. “Because we don’t compete against them in dual meets, the only time we see them is at the conference championships.”
Bates and Trinity are also expected to provide good match-ups.
The setup of the championships allows each swimmer a maximum of seven events, only three of which can be individual races. Bolich tries to place each woman in one event per day, but even that can be draining on the team.
“When you’re doing prelims, finals, and all the relays, that’s a lot of swimming,” she said. “We try to spread it out.”
With a solid record against conference opponents and consistently strong performances, the Cards are confident in their ability to race for the title. Pressure or fatigue would seem to be factors liable to get in the way, but not as Shapiro sees it.
“The confidence we have comes from how we train and perform in the pool,” she said. “The team does the work itself. We’re really unified, and I would like to think [Krems] and I had some hand in that, but it’s really just a great group.”
Leave a Reply