Men's Swimming and Diving Sinks Brown

Although the Harvard men’s swimming and diving team had not competed since late November, the squad did not appear to show any rust when it returned to action on Thursday.

Racing against Brown (3-3, 0-3 Ivy) in Providence, R.I., the Crimson (4-0, 4-0) opened up an early lead and did not look back en route to a 206-90 victory over the Bears.

Each of five Harvard swimmers earned two individual first-place finishes, and the Crimson failed to earn the top spot in only two of the 16 events. The team effort improved Harvard’s all-time record against Brown to 80-2.

“I think we went into the meet with the right mentality,” freshman Christian Carbone said. “We knew that it wasn’t going to be an extremely difficult meet, but despite that everybody was fired up to race and give 100 percent…. We actually did med balls in the morning, and we lifted the afternoon before, so everybody was a little tired. But we gave it a good effort, and I think everybody was pretty pleased.”

In the diving portion of the meet, sophomore Mike Mosca dominated each of his two events, besting the school records he set last year in both.

Mosca first took to the board in the 1-meter, where he posted a score of 372.45 to lay down a new high mark.

But the sophomore was not done yet. Just a few minutes later, he set his second record of the night on the 3-meter board. The mark of 412.42 shattered the previous high by more than 17 points.

“I’m obviously excited that I dove that well,” Mosca said. “If there’s any pool I want to dive well at, it’s the Brown pool because that’s where [Ivy League Championships] is going to be.”

No other diver came close to Mosca, and he went on to win the two events by 74 and 85 points, respectively.

“I thought [Mosca’s] performance was absolutely awesome,” Carbone said. “It’s just amazing what those guys do, with the mental preparation that goes into it. I know that they weren’t very rested for this meet either…. To be able to perform like this a week after very intensive training bodes excellently for the rest of the season.”

Sophomore Chuck Katis contributed another solid performance for the Crimson. Katis took first in the 100-yard backstroke and the 200 IM, the latter of which he won by just under four seconds.

Katis also helped Harvard to victory in the final event of the night, the 200 medley relay. Although the top Crimson lineup found itself trailing after the first leg, the squad clawed its way back to record its best time of the season and end the night on a high note.

Junior Oliver Lee, sophomore Michael Gaudiani, and Carbone were the three other Harvard swimmers who achieved two first-place finishes in individual events.

Like Katis, Lee propelled himself to a total of three top-spot finishes on the day. The sprinter took first in the 50- and 100-yard freestyle races, and he swam the third leg for the victorious 200 IM squad.

Gaudiani shouldered some of the longer swims for the Crimson. He edged out the Bears’ Cory Mayfield by just over half a second in the 500 free, and closed out his night with a victory in the stroke’s 1000-yard event.

Carbone, for his part, also took home first place in both the 200 breaststroke and the fly at the same distance. Freshman Christian Yeager cleaned up in the 200 back for his third win in the event this season.

“I think we’re in a really good place, especially considering the consistency we’ve had,” Carbone said.

The win was Harvard’s largest margin of victory this season. The squad placed at least two competitors in the top three spots in all but two events.

The Crimson will return to the Brown pool for the Ivy League Championships, a three-day event beginning on March 7. The team attempted to replicate the structure of that meet against the Bears by working out before the races and waking up early the next morning to get in another tough swim.

“There was a lot of energy going in because we wanted to make it feel just like Ivy’s, so we prepared ourselves to compete as if it’s the end of the season,” Mosca said. “I thought it was a good experience, and it was fun to do that with the team.”

—Staff writer David Steinbach can be reached at dsteinbach@college.harvard.edu.