Crimson Settles for Second

The 20th-ranked Harvard men’s swimming and diving team traveled to the 2009 Ivy League Championships at Princeton’s DeNunzio Pool this past weekend to defend its title as Ivy League Champions. They would face tough competition from the hometown Tigers, and despite strong performances from the Crimson, Harvard would have to settle for second place.

Crimson junior swimmer Alex Meyer, certainly exhausted by the final stretch of the long and grueling men’s 1650-meter freestyle, pushed past his limits in order to out-touch his main opponent, Princeton sophomore Patrick Briggs, edging him down the final length of the pool in Saturday’s race.

Meyer finished first in 15:01.18, a mere 0.81 seconds ahead of Briggs, while Meyer’s teammate, sophomore Blake Lewkowitz, followed closely behind in 15:06.91, fending off another Tiger to take fourth place in the race.

“It wasn’t my best time,” Meyer said about his showing. But the junior took pride in accomplishing what had been one of the Crimson’s main objectives for the weekend—beating Princeton.

“I do pretty much anything I can not to let a Princeton swimmer beat me,” Meyer said.

Ivy League Championship competition began on Thursday and continued through Saturday with preliminaries raced each morning and finals held in the evenings.

The Crimson accumulated 1,311.5 points over the three-day meet to finish second overall in a close battle with the Tigers (1663.5). Harvard claimed multiple first-place finishes and broke seven meet records on the way to a successful Ivy Championships.

The Crimson entered the meet 8-1 on the season with a 6-1 winning record against Ancient Eight opponents and was looking to capture the Ivy League title for the second year running.

Harvard was also seeking revenge against the host team, which previously delivered the Crimson its only loss of the season, 193-160, at the annual HYP meet held at Blodgett Pool a month ago.

Harvard senior co-captain Eric Lynch set high standards for the team, opening up Thursday’s finals with a third-place finish in the 500-meter freestyle. Lynch touched in an NCAA ‘B’ cut time of 4:19.91 that broke the former pool record.

The relays also continued to be strong events for Harvard this past weekend. The Crimson’s 200-meter medley relay team consisting of sophomore Jordan Diekema, junior Simone Melillo, senior Bill Jones and senior David Guernsey cruised to a first place finish in a time of 1:27.61. They notched Harvard’s first win of the meet, breaking the event record previously set by a Crimson quartet in 2006.

The relay team also earned the event’s only All-Ivy first-team selection, swimming what would be one of many NCAA “B” cut times of the meet.

Jones followed his performance in the relay with a stellar personal best swim in the 100-meter butterfly on Saturday. The senior finished third in 1:43.24, breaking the previous meet record of 1:44.36 and making an NCAA “B” cut. Jones’ twin brother Dan followed suit, finishing fifth in 1:45.67 for his second NCAA ‘B’ cut time for the day.

“I was very pleased with my race,” Bill Jones said. “It was a really, really fast event this year and I was able to get a best time.”

Guernsey swam his own NCAA ‘B’ cut time in the 100-meter freestyle on Saturday. He clocked in a mark of 43.58 for third place.

For Harvard diving, sophomore Zac Ranta took fifth place in the three-meter event on Saturday earning 25 points for the team.

Ranta will compete at the NCAA Zone Diving Championships to be held in Buffalo, N.Y. March 12-14.

“We came up a little short of our goal of beating Princeton,” said Jones of the Crimson’s overall performance. “I think we definitely fought hard throughout the weekend though and carried a lot of energy as a team.”

This week, the team waits anxiously to hear whether or not its ‘B’ cut times will be enough to earn individual invitations to the NCAA championships scheduled for March 26-28.