Crimson Grabs Third Crown

The Harvard men’s swimming and diving team capped off a perfect season this past weekend with a decisive win at the Eastern Intercollegiate Swimming League (EISL) championships.

With the victory in its home pool, the Crimson boosted its record to 9-0, and can add another championship to its Ivy League and EISL regular-season titles, as well as a first-place finish at ECACs which it claimed last week.

The victory—which marked the 20th time Harvard has taken the EISL crown—was a step up from last year’s second-place showing, where they finished behind Princeton. This year the roles were reversed and the Tigers went back to New Jersey in second, trailing the Crimson (1564 points) by over 300 points.

Harvard was led by co-captain Geoff Rathgeber. Rathgeber took first in three individual events, and also took home two individual awards—the Harold Ulen Award, which is awarded to an athlete for a career-high point total, and the Philip Moriarty Award for most outstanding athlete, which he shared with Alex Righi from Yale. This was the second Philip Moriarty Award that Rathgeber has to his name, winning the title at last year’s contest as well.

In the individual races, Rathgeber touched the wall first in the 200-yard IM, 400-yard IM, and 200-yard breaststroke, earning him two NCAA “A” qualifying times and one NCAA “B” time, respectively.

He was also part of the winning 400-yard medley relay team along with freshman Jordan Diekema, junior Bill Jones, and fellow senior Pat Quinn. The team’s 3:13.34 time set new meet and EISL records.

Quinn and Rathgeber also helped to set another Blodgett Pool record in the 200-yard freestyle relay, where they were joined by junior David Guernsey and freshman Will Heyburn, breaking the record they had set previously that day in the preliminaries.

The Crimson’s streak didn’t stop there, however, as Rathgeber, Diekema, Jones, and Quinn posted a new pool record in the 200-yard medley relay with a time of 1:27.88, which is also good enough for an NCAA “B” bid. Rathgeber also set the new standard for the 200 IM with a 1:45:62 finish, earning himself an NCAA “A” qualifying time and an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament in Washington later this month.

Jones captured a new pool record and an NCAA “B” qualifying time in the 100-yard butterfly, as did freshman Justin Davidson (100-yard breaststroke), bringing Harvard’s total of records broken for the weekend up to seven.

“We really couldn’t have asked for a better performance out of our team,” Rathgeber said. “Top to bottom, we really swam with a lot of poise and determination.”

Assistant coach Mark Cella was in complete agreement with the co-captain.

“These guys swam out of their minds,” Cella said. “Really this was an all-around team effort and all the credit goes to the athletes—they were unbelievable.”

Another set of remarkable performances came from three of the distance swimmers, co-captain Sam Wollner, junior Eric Lynch, and sophomore Alex Meyer, who took the top three spots in both the 1000-yard freestyle and 1650-yard freestyle.

In the 1000-yard freestyle, Wollner and Lynch tied for first place with a time of 9:02:83, with Meyer coming in third, and in the 1650-yard freestyle, Lynch, Wollner, and Meyer picked up a 1-2-3 finish, respectively. All three athletes also earned NCAA “B” qualifying times with their showings in the 1650-yard freestyle.

“I don’t think that’s been done in I don’t know how long,” Rathgeber said of the Crimson distance swimmer’s domination of their events. “That’s just an amazing feat.”

Harvard picked up many other first-place victories to finish the meet with 13 wins total, including performances by Wollner in the 500-freestyle, Diekema in the 200-yard backstroke, and Wollner, Guernsey, Jones, and sophomore Mason Brunnick in the 800-yard freestyle relay. The athletes also earned NCAA “B” qualifying times in all three events.

The Crimson rounded out the weekend with additional NCAA “B” qualifying times, including Lynch, Brunnick, and Meyer in the 500-yard freestyle, Brunnick in the 1650-freestyle, and Guernsey in the 100-yard and 200-yard freestyle.

Quinn also swam a NCAA “B” time in the 100-freestyle, as did Jones and his brother, Dan Jones, in the 200-yard butterfly.

“It’s been an amazing season,” Rathgeber said.

“It’s more than I ever could have asked for as a senior.”

—Staff writer Alexandra J. Mihalek can be reached at amihalek@fas.harvard.edu.