A Tale of Two Swimmers

It was meant to be a heat that didn’t count for anything.

Nearing the end of a senior season that saw his pool-time cut drastically by a chronic injury, swimmer Dan Jones hit the water for a non-scoring run of his signature event, the 100 butterfly. The event drew little interest from the crowd.

Jones’ finish was a different story. Fans and teammates exploded in jubilation when the Crimson swimmer’s time was displayed on the board, showing that he had recorded the fastest effort of the day—a mark that bested the January “Iron Man” meet’s eventual first place finisher by a tenth of a second.

But there was a time when first place showings weren’t so unexpected. Taking the pool for nearly two decades alongside his twin brother Bill, Dan enjoyed more than his share of success prior to this winter.

Raised in a family that included four male swimmers, Bill and Dan showed a drive to dominate the pool from the moment they hit the water.

“We always had a good family dynamic for swimming,” Bill recalls. “Dan and I were the more competitive of the four and were always swimming together...especially in high school when we were the only two on our team at our level. If it wasn’t for Dan, I wouldn’t be able to do what I can do, and I think vice-versa.”

Growing up as stars in a small-time program in Fremont, Mich., the Jones twins had little structure to guide their workouts and instead relied on each other to help maintain their intensity.

“[Our] competition is kind of a silent rivalry,” Dan says. “You don’t see it right away, but we’re always there pushing each other, and definitely supporting each other.”

The two gained so much notoriety for their fierce battles that friends in high school and college have been known to place bets on their favorite brother.

“I can’t tell you how many times we’ve been within a tenth of a second,” Dan laughs. “We’ve even tied for 16th before and had to swim off.”

As the Jones’ talent grew in their late teens, the twins abandoned their second sport—cross-country—and focused on the prospect of recruitment. Despite their childhood fixation with local aquatic powerhouse Michigan, the allure of Cambridge changed the brothers’ thinking.

“I feel like swimming is a good balance with academics here,” Bill explains. “I don’t know if I’d find quite the same balance at any other school. When I’m on [the residential] side of the river, I’ve got schoolwork or whatever, but when I go on [the athletic] side I can just release stress and let it all out in the pool.”

“It’s been great,” Dan adds. “The team is really close and there are always guys to hang out with who support you..we definitely, definitely made the right decision.”

The Crimson family provided a welcome home for the Jones brothers, but Dan and Bill faced the immediate challenge of fitting into a highly-structured program after largely self-coaching through high school.

“It was a very big transition for us [to Division I swimming],” says Bill, citing weight training, two-a-day practices, and the large team format as college revelations. “Those three things, along with interactions with the coach really worked well, and we both dropped significant times.”

As much as the Jones brothers gained from Harvard swimming, they also gave back to the program, bringing infectious dedication and intensity to the pool.

“There’s an inherent competitiveness [between Dan and Bill],” head swimming coach Tim Murphy says. “When they went against each other, they always raised the bar for everyone else. It added to our competitiveness across the board.”

The Jones brothers made an impact on the scoreboard from the outset. Bill garnered All-Ivy honors in the 200 medley as a freshman, and each twin notched multiple All-Ivy selections in his second season. The two have etched their names in the Crimson record books with dominance of their signature events—the 100 and 200 butterfly. Bill’s times of 47.29 and 1:45.12 stand as the top marks in school history, while Dan owns the sixth best effort in both races.

With strong improvements early in their careers, the brothers appeared destined to bring a one-two punch to the pool for the Crimson. But an unforeseeable chronic injury began to create distance in their athletic results. With Bill notching nationals-caliber times, Dan found himself relegated to decreasingly strenuous workouts.

“I essentially couldn’t train hard the entire [senior] season,” Dan says. “In February, I was able to get in the water more, but I was still only training five hours a week compared to 20 hours a week.”

The disparities caused some of the famed Jones competition to evaporate. Bill qualified for the NCAA championships his junior year in both fly events, earning Mid-Major All-America Team honors from CollegeSwimming.com, while Dan failed to qualify for nationals. Bill—the 16-time All-Ivy selection—competed even more furiously this past season, guaranteeing a second trip to nationals over spring break this year.

Still, while much of the attention has shifted to the more heralded twin, Dan has refused to give in to his setbacks.

At this year’s Ivy championships, Dan went on to cut his time by three seconds from where it had been a month before, posting a 47.47 to take fourth in the 100 fly, as well as fifth in the 200 fly—both admirable feats for a “part-time” competitor.

“[Dan] hung in there, fought through discouraging times and found a way,” Murphy praises. “It shows the kind of athlete and kind of person he is that he still had the ability to perform at a high level.”

While the injured twin proves at a loss for words to describe his season-ending accomplishments, Bill knows his brother well enough to explain the inspiring effort.

“I think it was just the sheer will of wanting to swim fast,” Bill says. “It was his senior year and just determination through all the hard work he put in the last 18 years.”

Neither twin plans to continue swimming competitively following graduation, and the Winthrop roommates and fellow Organismic and Evolutionary Biology concentrators will have to face the reality of separation for the first time in their lives. Dan will prepare for medical school, while Bill enters graduate school in oceanography. But the distance won’t diminish the twins’ appreciation for their fraternal bond.

“There is no way either of us would have gotten this far, both getting into Harvard and doing as well as we have swimming, without each other,” Dan says.

—Staff writer Max N. Brondfield can be reached at mbrondf@fas.harvard.edu.