Swimmers First, Icemen Second

Fusco. Busconi. Blair. Heard these names before? They're current and past members of the Harvard hockey team.

Now try Egan. Roberts. Miao. Nothing? Those three athletes helped propel the Harvard men's swimming squad to its sixth straight Eastern Seaboard championship this past weekend at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y. The aquamen erased a 21-point deficit after Friday night and overtook Princeton (434 points) and Brown (387) to capture the title with 464 points.

What separated this triumph from its five predecessors was the way it was earned and the unique cast of swimmers who made the championship possible. Before this season, Harvard had completely dominated the Eastern Intercollegiate Swimming League (EISL), padding its five Eastern triumphs with an awesome 32-match winning streak that spanned four-and-a-half years. That streak came to a shocking halt earlier this season when the aquamen dropped back-to-back dual meets to Navy and Columbia. The roof had finally caved in on the Crimson.

However, the squad fought back to win the rest of its meets, polishing off archrivals Princeton and Penn State and regaining then East's number-one ranking along the way. All the aquamen hoped for was to peak at the right time: the Easterns.

"When we were written off [after the 0-2 start]" said Harvard Coach Joe Bernal, "we had to scratch, claw, bite and do just about everything. And that made it twice as sweet twice as rewarding to turn things around."

Bernal also mentioned "the built-in mechanism in our society which likes to see champions knocked off." Indeed, it seemed that all elements had teamed up to make it difficult, if not impossible, for Harvard to repeat as champions.

This unfriendly atmosphere was highlighted on Friday with the controversial disqualification of Lars Reierson in the 400-yd individual medley. The freshman's eighth-place finish would have kept Harvard within 10 points of the lead Instead, the aquamen fell to third place (after leading at the end of Thursday's events), three points behind Brown and 21 points behind the Tigers, who had taken advantage of the day's events to assume the lead.

Bernal protested the decision, but to no avail. The Crimson camp was feeling very frustrated. "What could we do?" asked Co-Captain Courtney Roberts. "We could just use that anger in the pool." At the time, Bernal said that the disqualification could act as "a double-edged sword," equally capable of helping or hurting the team's morale.

The team's situation was decidely unambiguous, however.

"We knew we had to swim our best on Saturday to win," Roberts said.

And that's exactly what the aquamen did. Saturday featured sophomore Peter Egan's scintillating performance in the 200-yd, butterfly. Egan broke the meet and Harvard records with a superb time of 1:47.97 minutes, making him the only Crimson swimmer to qualify for the NCAAs three weeks from now.

Moreover, Egan's victory could not have come at a more opportune time. Earlier in the day, sophomore Tim Ford and Roberts combined to give the aquamen an 11-point lead with respective second- and fourth-place finishes in the 1650-yd. freestyle. But Princeton had bounced back to take a three-point advantage after the 200-yd. breast stroke with only three events remaining.

"I didn't think about the record," Egan said. "The team was counting on the 20 points, and I let it hang out on the final 50...We just wanted it [the championship] too badly for anything to go wrong."

Egan's run, which Roberts termed "awesome," coupled with Bill McCloskey's third-place finish, helped the Crimson break the meet wide open.

In other events, Harvard swimmers once again proved better than their pre-game billing. Dan Simkowitz, seeded fourth in the 200-yd. backstroke, turned in an inspired performance, taking second place in 1:52.58. He was followed in sixth by Co-Captain Julian Bott, who finished in 1:53.11. Senior Mike Miao placed fifth in the 100-yd. freestyle (45.63 seconds) while junior Bob Hrabchak came in seventh. Karl Illig was third in the three-meter diving, and the Harvard team of Miao, Brian Grottkau, Hrabchak, and Jim Kornish placed in the 400-yd freestyle relay with a time of 3:02.97.

THE NOTEBOOK: Harvard finished its season with an 8-2 overall record (7-2 EISL). In addition to the Eastern Seaboards victory, the aquamen split the EISL regular season crown with Princeton, Columbia and Cornell