Individual Competitors Fuel Team Effort in Dominant Season

The No. 22 Harvard men’s swimming and diving team ended the year with plenty of reason to celebrate. Amassing an unprecedented number of accolades—both on the team and individual levels—by the completion of the 2007-08 season, the Crimson claimed the Ivy League and EISL regular season titles, as well as first place in both the ECAC and EISL Championship meets.

Starting the road to success with a clean sweep of Dartmouth and Cornell in its first meet of the season, Harvard kept the momentum all year long, defeating every opponent it faced. After a solid win over Princeton—the only dual loss for last year’s squad—the Crimson built on its momentum by easily defeating Penn in its final regular season contest. The win gave Harvard a perfect 9-0 dual meet season and claimed the regular season title, which had gone to the Tigers the previous winter.

The Crimson accomplished all of this despite spending the majority of its season swimming away from the friendly confines of Blodgett Pool.

“Being undefeated in the dual meet season was a tremendous accomplishment, because most of our meets were away,” co-captain Sam Wollner said. “Not only did we go undefeated, but we did it in other pools.”

With a perfect regular season in the books, the surging swimmers and divers continued their winning ways in an extraordinary postseason campaign, taking home a first-place victory in both ECACs and EISLs to round out the year. At the EISL Championships, the Crimson also claimed numerous individual awards along with its team victory.

Multiple swimmers completed races in record-breaking times and notched automatic and provisional bids to the NCAA Championships. Meanwhile, co-captain Geoff Rathgeber was honored with both the Philip Moriarty and Harold Ulen Awards for most outstanding athlete and career high-point scorer, respectively.

These results come as no surprise when the talents of individual swimmers and divers and the depth of the team are taken into consideration. In the NCAA Division I swimming rankings, Harvard boasted at least one athlete in the top 100 of every event, with each of the relay squads claiming a spot in the top 25. Additionally, the Crimson possessed 29 of the top 100 individual performers in the nation.

According to head coach Tim Murphy, the team can take added pride in its season when it looks back at the hard work and dedication that made it so successful.

“The pride that they have in themselves as a team was a well-earned and a well-deserved pride that was built on the foundation of the values and commitments that they made during the year,” Murphy said.

Evidently, these efforts paid off, as this year’s Crimson raised the bar for the program and sent off the departing senior class with a very memorable last season.

“I’m very proud of all the accomplishments we’ve had this year,” Wollner said. “I can’t imagine a better way to go out as a senior.”

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