Facing off against the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London on Saturday, the women’s swimming and diving team defeated the Bears 193-99 in its final meet of the regular season, while the men fell short by a small margin.
The Cardinal women turned in some of their best performances of the season, dominationg in many races throughout the meet. Most notably, Stephanie Lasby ’06 won her final regular season race as an individual, taking the 500-yard freestyle by a comfortable eight-second margin. In addition, Lasby took second in the 200-yard butterfly to teammate Carly Bollinger ’08, who also won the 200-yard individual medley.
Other top performers included Eliza Jones ’07, who won the 200-yard freestyle and placed second in the 100-yard freestyle, and Jessica Houghton, who won the women’s three meter diving. But the Cardinal star of the day was Caitlin Bethlahmy ’09.
Bethlahmy swam brilliantly, beginning the day with a nearly 30-second win in the 1000-yard freestyle, followed by comfortable victories in the 100 and 200-yard backstroke events. Despite largely swimming solo, she managed to swim some fast times, even by her high standards.
“I was close to season-best times, so now I’m excited to swim at our championship meet once I am rested,” Bethlahmy said after the dominating performances.
As the women improved their record on the season to 12-6, the men fell short, losing to the hosts by a score of 167-127.
Despite the loss, the Cardinal men turned in some great performances. Co-captain Rob Mitchell ’06 won the 500-yard Freestyle and placed third in the 1000-yard freestyle in his last regular season meet. The Cardinals dominated the backstroke events, as Chris Becker ’09 won the 100-yard backstroke and Will Hasty ’08 was victorious in the 200-yard backstroke.
The highlight of the day was Ben Byers’ ’07 win in the 1000-yard freestyle over Coast Guard’s Robert Brown ’08, who as a freshman broke all of the Academy’s Freestyle records from the 200-yard to the 1650-yard freestyle events. Byers and Brown spent most of the race swimming neck and neck more than half a length ahead of the competition. After 950 yards, it was still impossible to tell who would win the race, but Byers crushed Brown with a blistering time of 26.19 seconds over the final 50 yards.
To put it in perspective, 26.19 seconds is only three hundredths of a second slower than the fastest 50-yard split of the winner of the 200-yard freestyle.
“It was inspiring to watch,” said Seth Murphy ’09. “He just refused to lose.”
After a long regular season, the Cardinals will have a chance to rest up for the NESCAC Championship meet, which starts on Feb. 24th and runs until Feb. 26th. Both teams are coming into the meet with great hopes, as the men are looking for a top five finish and the women are looking to improve on last year’s eighth-place showing.
“We’re looking to move up in the standings from where we were last year,” Bethlahmy said. “Based on our dual-meet record, I think that that’s definitely possible.”
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