Courtesy: DSPics.com Geoff Rathgeber swam the second-fastest 200 IM in the nation this season in Thursday's finals

PRINCETON, N.J. -- Junior Geoff Rathgeber shattered his own school and league records in the 200-yard individual medley, and junior Lucas Sanders captured the league championship in one-meter diving as Harvard finished the first day of competition in second place at the Eastern Intercollegiate Swimming League championships Thursday at DeNunzio Pool. Princeton finished the first round of finals with the advantage as the Tigers scored 442 points in the evening session. Harvard holds second place with 353.5 points, followed by Cornell (304), Navy (266.5) and Columbia (266) to round out the top five. Rathgeber provided the meets top individual performance thus far as he cruised to his third straight league championship in the 200 IM. He touched the wall Thursday in 1:44.67, bettering his own school, league and meet records of 1:46.11 (set at last year's meet) and erasing the previous pool record of 1:46.92, set by Tennessee's Andrew Thirlwell in 2006.
Sanders, meanwhile, was first in a 30-man field in one-meter diving as the junior scored 305.90 points to take a comfortable win as no other diver came within five points of the 300 mark. Harvard opened the meet by grabbing the second-place points in the 200 freestyle relay as the Crimson's quartet of Rathgeber, David Guernsey, Bill Jones and Pat Quinn finished in 1:21.66, behind Cornell's winning time, but ahead of three other squads that all finished within two-tenths of a second of Harvard's group.Cornell swimmers took the top two places in the 500 freestyle, but Harvard emerged with the lead in the team standings after that event by virtue of two scorers in the championship final and two of the top three places in the consolation race. Sam Wollner and Eric Lynch both turned in provisional NCAA championship-qualifying times as Wollner took third in 4:24.19, and Lynch was fourth in 4:26.09. The next event, the 50 freestyle, saw Quinn and Guernsey deliver top-four finishes as Quinn took second in 20.43 seconds, while Guernsey was fourth in 20.49. After Sanders's win on the diving board, Harvard capped Thursday's action by taking second in the 400 medley relay. Rathgeber and Quinn joined Jason Degnan-Rojeski and Dan Jones to finish in an NCAA provisional time of 3:14.88. Cornell took first in a meet and pool record 3:13.61.

Courtesy: DSPics.com Sam Wollner won the EISL title in the 1,000-yard freestyle Friday

PRINCETON, N.J. -- Geoff Rathgeber claimed another pool record and hit another NCAA provisional qualifying time as Harvard remained in second place through the second day of competition at the Eastern Intercollegiate Swimming League championships Friday at DeNunzio Pool.
Rathgeber, who set meet and pool records in the 200 individual medley in Thursday's opening day of competition, followed that effort by taking first in the 400 IM Friday, swimming 3:47.59 to break the DeNunzio Pool record and win the event by nearly four seconds. The Crimson was dealt a setback in the first event of Friday's finals as Harvard was disqualified from the 200-yard medley relay while the Crimson was ahead in the race.
Harvard was able to make up some of the gap in the next event as junior Sam Wollner edged Princeton's top swimmer for first place in the 1,000 freestyle, swimming 9:06.36. Eric Lynch claimed fourth in that event. while Alex Meyer and Mason Brunnick took seventh and eighth, respectively.
Harvard placed three swimmers in the championship final of the 100 butterfly as Dan Jones took second place while Bill Jones was third and Pat Quinn sixth. Harvard's top finisher in the 200 freestyle was David Guernsey, who took the fifth-place points behind a pair of swimmers from Cornell and Columbia. The Crimson didn't have an entrant in the championship race off the 100 breaststroke, through Harvard had the top two places in the consolation final as Joc Christiana and Simone Melillo took ninth and 10th, respectively. Jason Degnan-Rojeski followed with a fourth-place finish in the 100 backstroke. Harvard finished the meet by taking third in the 800 freestyle relay.

Courtesy: DSPics.com Geoff Rathgeber was named Most Outstanding Swimmer at the EISL championships

PRINCETON, N.J. -- Junior Geoff Rathgeber picked up his third individual event win of the Eastern Intercollegiate Swimming League championships Saturday, earning Most Outstanding Swimmer honors, as Harvard placed second to Princeton in the team standings of the three-day event at DeNunzio Pool. Harvard had made a run at Princeton's point total early in Saturday's finals, but the Tigers, who won just one of the 21 events in the three days, used their depth to capture the EISL title for the second straight year. Princeton won the meet with 1,405 points, while Harvard was second with 1,220.5. Yale took third with 1,036 points, edging fourth-place Columbia, which had 1,031. Cornell, which won the EISL dual meet championship, was fifth in the championship meet with 963.5 points, followed by Navy (801.5), Brown (624), Penn (580.5) and Dartmouth (316).  Harvard, which entered the meet trailing Princeton by 120.5 points, was able to put a sizable dent into the Tigers' lead early as the Crimson rode a 1-2 finish from Sam Wollner and Eric Lynch in the 1,650-yard freestyle. Both swimmers hit provisional NCAA qualifying times as Wollner touched first in 15:15.37, and Lynch was a stroke off the pace in 15:15.56. Freshmen Alex Meyer and Mason Brunnick took the sixth and seventh places for Harvard, which closed to within 75.5 points of the Tigers after the event. The gap closed to 50.5 points after Rathgeber swam away with his third pool record in the 200 backstroke. He won the race by more than two seconds on the field, touching the wall in 1:43.54 to automatically qualify for the NCAA meet. That time broke the pool record of 1:44.20, held by former teammate David Cromwell '06. Senior Jason Degnan-Rojeski was fifth in the event, while no Princeton swimmers reached the championship final, allowing Harvard to get within striking distance of the team lead. Harvard's Pat Quinn and David Guernsey took third and fifth in the 100 freestyle, though Princeton also had two swimmers in the championship final to remain ahead of the Crimson. The Tigers were able to widen their lead in the 200 breaststroke, when Joc Christiana's solid sixth-place finish was offset by a fourth- and an eighth-place finish from Princeton swimmers. Princeton then had four of the top eight finishers in a fast 200 butterfly, to gain even more distance between the field, despite a fifth-place showing from Dan Jones and a seventh-place effort from Bill Jones. Dan Jones's time of 1:47.64 was good for provisional NCAA championship consideration. The Crimson's Lucas Sanders, who had taken the EISL title in one-meter diving Thursday, was sixth on the three-meter board Saturday. Harvard closed the meet in fine fashion, upsetting Cornell's top-seeded quartet in the 400 freestyle relay. The Big Red, which had won all of the previous relays in the meet, and had the only group to break three minutes in qualifying, was 12-hundredths behind the Crimson heading into the final leg. But Rathgeber held off Cornell standout Mike Smit to touch in 2:57.23, provisionally qualifying the Crimson for the NCAA meet.
Rathgeber shared the Most Outstanding Swimmer award with Yale's Alex Righi. Smit, meanwhile, won the Harold Ulen Award as the meets top-scoring athlete during his career. Yale's Jeff Lichtenstein took home the Karl B. Michael Award as the meets top diver.