M. Swimming at Easterns

Still smarting from the loss to Princeton at the Harvard-Princeton-Yale (H-Y-P) meet, the Harvard men's swimming and diving team is looking forward to taking a second shot at proving its superiority at Easterns starting today.

Eighteen of the team members headed out to West Point Tuesday night to prepare for the competition. Their goal for this meet is to get as many people as possible qualified for NCAAs as well as to break pool, team and meet records.

Harvard will face a disadvantage at Easterns because six key athletes will not be shaved or tapered in order to save their peak performances for NCAAs coming up later in the season. In addition, the Crimson will lack the diving part of the swimming and diving team, which will hurt its final score.

Princeton, Harvard's rival in the Eastern Conference, is not likely to send many team members to the NCAAs, so it has chosen to focus on winning the Easterns. The Tigers will have their entire team shaved and tapered.

"This meet will be closer than most people think," said co-captain Dave Schwartz. "Princeton is swimming really well this season. In the past five or six years there has not been an Easterns expected to be this close. Regardless, we have some outstanding swimmers and we can and should win this year."

"We are expecting the shaved team members to have lifetime bests and the unshaved members to have lifetime unshaved bests. This will be an exciting meet," he said.

There are a few Princeton swimmers that the Harvard team will be keeping an eye on. Freshman Clayton Jones made some enemies at H-Y-P by flexing and over-celebrating after he barely out-touched sophomore Tim Martin in the 500 Freestyle and then again when his relay team won the final Freestyle Relay.

Also, Princeton's junior freestyler Matt Vogt and senior breaststroker Davin Quinn are especially strong swimmers. As a result, part of Harvard's focus will be preventing those two from scoring a lot of points.

"Every Harvard swimmer is important and we need to swim our best given the results of the H-Y-P meet," said sophomore Brian Cadman. "For the people who are ending their season here, we want to go out winning, and for those going on to the NCAAs, this is a great way to set up for successful swims there."

Some possible highlights for the Harvard team at Easterns include freshman Will Oren's performance in the 200 Butterfly.

"I believe that the performance of our freshman class will be crucial to our overall success," said senior Mike Kiedel. "I expect to see some strong performances from them, especially in the non-Freestyle events."

Also, the 100, 200 and 500 Freestyle will be deciding events and the prospects for a positive outcome look good. The Crimson will be stacking these events with multiple swimmers in order to reduce the possibility that Princeton will be able to score high points. At Easterns, the top 16 places earn points toward the team's final score, so Harvard will want to fill as many of those spots as possible.

In addition, the 400 Individual Medley looks really strong with defending champions junior Greg Wriede, Cadman and freshman Mike Groves competing. Perhaps most important, though, will be the final relays. The relays earn double the amount of points that individual events earn. As a result, the relays can make or break a meet--fortunately, Harvard's relays are expected to do well this year.

"In the past, every Harvard-Princeton relay race has come down to a matter of a few tenths of a second, and that will be the case this time as well," said senior Matt Cornue. "However, we have the psychological edge this year, especially since we have me and also because we have been working on improving our relay exchanges."

Overall, the Harvard team feels good about its chance to do well at Easterns but it will not lose its primary focus which is on the up coming NCAAs.