Dan Jones and the Crimson will host
the 2008 EISL Championship.
The Particulars
After a win at last week's ECAC Championships, the men’s
swimming and diving team hopes to continue its post season success as
it hosts
the EISL Swimming and Diving Championships at Blodgett Pool, March 6-8.
Harvard
is looking for revenge against the Princeton Tigers, who was the only
team to
finish higher than the Crimson at last year’s event.
This season, the No. 22 Crimson
clinched its sixth EISL regular-season title in head coach Tim
Murphy's
10-year
tenure with a 189-104 win over Penn Feb. 9. The victory also gave
Harvard a
perfect 9-0 record on the season, including an 8-0 mark in conference
competitions. The Crimson won the Ivy League regular-season title with
a 7-0 record against Ancient Eight opponents. Harvard men's swimming
has won 21 EISL titles in its stellar history.
Scouting
the Crimson
Harvard began its season with wins over Cornell (161-139), Dartmouth (226-72) and Columbia (195-105) and a fourth place
finish
at the Georgia Invitational. EISL wins over Navy (176-124) and Brown
(202-98)
moved Harvard’s conference record to 5-0 and helped the Crimson garner
some
national attention. Derick
Chui proved his worth in the backstroke, winning the
100 (1:01.00) and the 200 (2:05.50) in the meet in Annapolis, Md. Pat
Quinn
took second in the 50 freestyle in 23.12 but teamed for wins in the 200
free
and 400 medley relays. The early season success propelled the Crimson
to two wins
at the closely contested HYP meet Feb. 1-2, sweeping the meet for the
first
time since 2006. The Crimson ended up taking titles in 11 events
between the
two days, led by senior Geoff
Rathgeber who captured two individual and three
relay wins on the weekend. Bill
Jones and Dan
Jones swam NCAA “B” provisional
times in the 200 butterfly and Sam
Wollner also earned a provisional time with
a first place mark of 4:24.45 in the 500 freestyle. Eric
Lynch swam yet another
provisional time with a 15:21.68 time in his 1650 freestyle win.
After clinching the Ivy and EISL regular season titles,
Harvard turned its attention to the ECAC Championships, hosted last
weekend in Princeton,
N.J.
Despite not bringing a full squad, the Crimson turned in a number of
top-five
finishes and captured the ECAC title by a comfortable margin. The
Crimson took over first place early on day two and did
not relinquish the spot for the rest of the weekend. Evan
Schindewolf
(4:02.92), Tim
Parent (4:03.73) and Lynch (4:05.39) formed a two-three-four
finish in the 400 IM and Rick
McKellar, Eric
Taylor, Simone
Melillo and Brendan
Mitchell combined for a second place result in the 200 medley relay
with a time
of 1:33.00. On day three, Lynch took the 200 butterfly in a time of
1:50.37 and
Harvard finished with 524 total points, 60 more than second-place Johns
Hopkins. Last Season at EISL
Championships
Harvard was able to distance itself from seven teams in the
nine-team field, finishing in a comfortable second to champion Princeton. Rathgeber received the Philip
Moriarty Award,
which is awarded to the meet’s outstanding swimmer.
The Crimson started strong with a second-place finish in the
200 free relay by Rathgeber, Quinn, Bill
Jones and David
Guernsey (1:21.66) and
a three-four finish by Wollner (4:24.19) and Lynch (4:26.09) in the 500
free.
Wins in the 200 IM and the one-meter diving events by Rathgeber and
Luke
Sanders closed day one for Harvard.
Wollner took the 1000 free on day two and Rathgeber grabbed
his second individual win with a 3:47.59 mark in the 400 IM. The Jones
brothers
finished two-three in the 100 butterfly and the 800 freestyle relay
team of
Wollner, Guernsey, Bill
Jones and Mason
Brunnick took third to close day two.
Two Harvard wins started the final day of competition, with
Wollner winning the 1650 free in 15:15.37 and Rathgeber taking the 200
backstroke in 1:43.54. The 400 free relay team of Rathgeber, Guernsey,
Quinn and Bill
Jones closed the meet with a winning time of 2:57.23. Up Next
While the EISL meet represents the final team meet of the
season, the NCAA championships will be held on Thursday, March 27 in Federal Way, Wash.,
for those
that qualified during the season.