The incredibly stifling, humid air. The walls plastered with team banners and inspirational Tiger posters. A sea of orange and black in both the stands and on the pool deck, loudly cheering in unison for each Tiger swimmer in every event.
Add to that a small, but by no means quiet, cheering section for the five other teams participating and you have quite a lively sports atmosphere for a bitterly cold December weekend.
Make no mistake about it: The Princeton swimming season has begun.
With men's swimming taking on the likes of Brown, Penn State, Villanova and Tennessee, DeNunzio roared in typical mid-season form as the Tigers hosted their first major meet of the season — the Princeton Invitational. Looking as if they were in mid-season form themselves, the Tigers gave the No. 7 Volunteers a run for their money — trailing by only 28 points after the second day of competition.
In the end, though, Princeton (3-0 overall, 3-0 Ivy League) came up short and finished a respectable second while thoroughly defeating Ivy-rival Brown in dual meet competition by the score of 203-116.
Fast start
"We definitely swam well for this early in the season," senior captain Dennis Chang said. "No one really had a bad meet. Everyone just stepped up and gave us some good swims."
It was that simple for the Tigers this weekend. From freshmen to seniors, everyone contributed to the solid Princeton showing. The very first individual event — the 500-yard freestyle — was emblematic of the depth and strength of this Tiger squad.
Coming off of his Olympic performance for Peru three months ago, freshman Juan Valdivieso paced the Tiger attack in the event, finishing second with a time of four minutes, 25.63 seconds. He was followed immediately by junior Kevin Volz and sophomore Carl Hessler, whose times of 4:28.94 and 4:30.03 earned them fourth and fifth-place finishes, respectively. Add sophomore Paul Cremer almost sneaking under the radar at the ninth position and the Tigers had nullified the seemingly large point advantage created by the first through third-place finishes of Tennessee swimmers.
This pattern of filling the lower-scoring positions with Princeton swimmers to negate the Volunteers' attack continued throughout the weekend as the Tigers hung close for a majority of the meet. They were also buoyed by the performance of the diving team. Though they didn't win either competition outright, the divers put together a 4-5-6 showing in the men's one-meter event, while freshman Michael Sullivan earned a surprising third-place in three-meter competition with a score of 295.80.
"We were pretty surprised that we were so close [after the second day]," Chang said. "So our focus naturally shifted on the third day to see if we could pull it out."
The Tigers, however, were a little sluggish out of the gate in prelims Sunday. In almost all the individual events, there were a couple of Princeton swimmers who just missed qualifying for finals earlier that day, relegating them to a ninth-place finish.
What might have been
For example, sophomore Garth Fealey — who finished ninth in preliminaries — went an impressive 2:05.52 in the 200-yard breaststroke, which would have earned him a fourth-place finish had he qualified for the final eight. An even more glaring example occurred when Hessler swam the 200 fly in 1:49.98, which would have placed him third — right in between fellow teammates Valdivieso and senior captain Craig Wales.
But for the Tigers, solid times produced by its swimmers were the most important goal of the weekend, and in this arena, Princeton excelled.
"We had a lot of seasonal bests and lifetime bests from our guys this weekend. This is where we want to be [going into the heart of the season]," head coach Rob Orr said.
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