Men’s Swimming and Diving to Battle Princeton for Ivy League Title

“Forget Yale—the Crimson-Tiger rivalry is rapidly becoming the confrontation to talk about.”

So wrote Crimson sports writer Jill Brenner in 1995, several months before the college men’s swimming and diving season began.

In the short term, the prediction proved accurate, as Harvard upended reigning champion Princeton en route to the 1995-1996 title.

But Brenner was incorrect in one respect: the word “rapidly.” Crimson-Tiger dominance stretches back nearly a half-century, and no men’s swim team other than Harvard or Princeton has been an outright Ivy League title winner since 1971. That’s a 44-year streak of co-hegemony.

“The championship meet was the competition we looked forward to all season,” recalled Michael D. Smith, once a Princeton swim captain in 1983 and now the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. “To be in the pool with the best, especially during the relays, brought out exceptional performances every year.”

This Thursday the Crimson (9-1, 6-1 Ivy) heads to Providence, R.I. for the 2016 Ivy League Championships, fully aware of this long history of rivalry. This time around, Harvard is an underdog after conceding the conference title to Princeton (7-0, 7-0) last season and falling to the Tigers, 224.5-126.5, at the annual Harvard-Yale-Princeton meet this January.

“The competition is huge between our two teams,” co-captain Christian Yeager said. “Princeton is always on our mind. Those are the guys who took away our Ivy League title last year, and the fact that it’s always been so back and forth.leads us to really focus on that competition in practice every single day.”

Despite Princeton’s resounding win in the H-Y-P meet, Harvard has been targeting the Ivy Championships all season, and the Crimson is prepared to hit its best performances of the season this weekend.

“The nature of swimming is that no one really shows their cards until Ivy’s roll around,” said former captain Griffin Schumacher '15.

In past years, Harvard has tapered before big meets such as the Texas Invitational and H-Y-P. However, men’s swimming and diving coach Kevin Tyrrell decided that this year his team would keep the practice yardage and intensity up throughout the season in preparation for this championship meet.

“Physically we’re in a different place now than we’ve been in the entire year,” said Yeager. “When we went to race Princeton and Yale we swam tired…whereas for the past three weeks [our] practices have been much shorter.”

Harvard is in a strong position to take home top places in a number of individual events. Sophomore Logan Houck has the Ivy League’s second-fastest 1,000 freestyle, less than 3/10ths of a second off the fastest time of 9:10.38.

In addition Jack Manchester is fighting to break the Ivy League record in the 200 backstroke, a mark that he set last year. To win he will have to beat Princeton junior standout En-Wei Hu-Van Wright, who took top marks in the 100 back, as well as the 50 free and 100 free at HYP.

Both Yeager and Schumacher stressed that the sprint freestyle and butterfly events are must-watch. Junior Max Yakubovich and sophomore Steven Tan enter the 100 fly with the first- and third-fastest times in the league, respectively.

Mike Mosca '15 dominated the Ivy League in diving last year, and in the women’s championship last weekend, the Harvard divers played a crucial role in securing the title win. The group of sophomore David Pfeifer, sophomore Bobby Ross and freshman Luke Martinez are looking to continue the Crimson’s diving success. Pfeifer has already found the podium multiple times against Ivy League competition this season.

“I really like…the closeness between the divers and the swimmers on our team,” said Coach Tyrrell. “They’re always cheering for each other and communicating... It makes a good environment for them all to raise the bar for each other.”

Along with offering a chance to win the conference title, the championship meet also serves as Harvard’s best opportunity to qualify swimmers for the NCAA championships. As a conference, the Ancient Eight is hoping to make its mark at NCAA’s this year.

“It’s definitely something that brings us all together,” explained Schumacher. “I know that come relays everyone’s going to be pretty fired up and calling each other.”