Swimmers Swamp Tigers at Easterns

You could see it in the eyes and hear it in the screaming voices of the more than 1000 heavily partisan fans who packed steaming Blodgett Pool on Saturday night. The feeling grew as you watched the steady parade of Crimson aquamen to the medals stand.

And when coaches Joe Bernal and John Walker broke out the victory cigars and champagne and started doing full gainers off the 71/2 meter diving platform, it confirmed what was becoming more apparent throughout the weekend--that after heaven knows how many undefeated seasons with no Easterns victories, the Harvard swim team had finally gone all the way.

The Crimson splashed its way to an impressive 58-point victory in the 39th annual Eastern Seaboard Swimming and Diving Championships, its first in the 17 years that team scores have been kept at the meet. In doing so, it broke a string of six straight Easterns crowns for Bill Farley's talented Princeton brigade. Despite a rampant flu bug--that bit Harvard stars Bobby Hackett and Steve Schramm, among many others--and some incredible performances by the Tigers (most notably freestyler Andy Saltzman), Harvard amassed a total of 606 points to Princeton's 548. Army captured third place with 323 points.

Despite the festive atmosphere, the nerve-racking suspense that has characterized the final night of Easterns in so many years past was just about absent Saturday evening after the Crimson had virtually sewn up the meet with its performance at the trials earlier in the day.

Harvard had at least one swimmer in the championship final of every event on Saturday. (Friday night's 100-yd. breaststroke final was the only championship heat in the meet with no Crimson competitors.) In some contests, it had a lot more than that.

One such race was Saturday's opener, the 1650-yd. freestyle. Crimson sophomore Bobby Hackett, who won a silver medal in the metric equivalent of this event (1500 meters) at the Montreal Olympics, motored to the gold in this grueling race despite being so sick that he required smelling salts at the finish. Hackett's winning time reflected his weakened condition--he went 15:30.37 compared to his personal best of 14:59.

Right behind the ailing but still awesome Hackett was Crimson freshman Tim Maximoff, who sailed to the silver in 15:41.12, missing the qualifying time for the NCAA championships by only a second. Harvard's Mike Coglin and Chris Hancock finished eighth and 12th, respectively, in the timed final to give the Crimson a 53-17 edge over Princeton in this event.

Princeton made up a few points by packing four men into the eight-man final of the next event, the 100-yd. freestyle; but the effect of the Tiger onslaught was dulled by the efforts of Crimson sprinters Malcolm Cooper, Julian Mack and Jack Gauthier in the afternoon's qualifying heats. Cooper, Mack and Gauthier qualified first, fourth and fifth, respectively (and finished second, eighth and fifth).

The eventual winner was lanky Tiger junior Andy Saltzman, who got off the blocks last but burst past Cooper coming out of the final turn to touch first in 45.55, missing the NCAA cutoff time by .04 seconds.

Saltzman, who later led off Princeton's victorious 400-yd. freestyle relay with a 45.48 split to make that cutoff, said he wasn't afraid that Cooper had beaten him so badly at the start of the 100: "I've been a distance swimmer my whole life, so I knew I'd get abused on the start. I just didn't think it would be by that much."

Saltzman's triumph in the 100, coming after his upset of Hackett in the 200 free on Friday night and his silver in the 500 (behind Hackett) on Thursday, earned him a share (again, with Crimson whiz Hackett) of the Phil Moriarty Award for the meet's high individual point scorer.

After three more Harvard swimmers (Ron Raikula, Geoff Seelen and Lee Menichella) paddled their way into the big finals of the evening's third race, the 200-yd. backstroke, the Crimson jumped out to a commanding 55-point lead. Freshman Raikula became the meet's third double winner (Cornell diver Paul Steck later became the fourth), demonstrating the art of ultra-smooth backstroke for eight laps and a meet-and pool-record time of 1:52.20.

Perhaps the most inspired performance of the meet for the Crimson came in the qualifying heat of the next race, the 200-yd. breaststroke, from freshman Tom Royal. Royal ended a year of complaints about the Crimson breaststroke corps by cutting more than three seconds off his previous best time (dropping to 2:09.99) to make the championship final. Princeton's John Christensen won the event in pool record time.

Sophomore duo Dan Menichella and Campari Knoepffler then offset the solid performance of Tiger silver medalist Bill Specht in the 200 butterfly by churning to eighth and ninth, respectively, setting the stage for the final two events.

In the end, it was the first of these--the three-meter diving--that made the most difference (see story at left). Without the efforts of Steve Schramm and Jamie Greacen, who piled up 33 points to Princeton's zero in this event--for a total of 63 diving points in the meet--the Crimson would have led by only one going into the last relay.

As it was, the last relay, fortunately, was meaningless. And a new dynasty in Eastern swimming had reached a new height.