Men's Swimming: Faux ends sensational year with 50th-place finish at NCAA Championships

If you had told junior Geoff Faux a year ago where he would be today, he wouldn’t have believed it. The sprinter and backstroker not only pushed himself out of a career low; he shot straight to the top. On Friday, Faux swam the 50-yard freestyle at the NCAA championship — the fastest race in the country.

The sole Princeton representative made his NCAA Division I championship debut on Friday afternoon at Ohio State. His time of 20.33 seconds just missed his seed time of 19.73 seconds. And in such a short race, every millisecond counts. Seeded 20th, Faux finished 50th.

“My race wasn’t what I was hoping for,” Faux said. “I think being a rookie at a meet with world-class swimmers ended up getting to me. In a race that doesn’t allow any room for error, this happened to be one of the few races all season where I made a lot of errors.”

The top 16 finishers make the All-American squad, and with the prospect within reach, Faux faced even more pressure. Despite his disappointment, Faux’s fastest time this season still leaves him with a top-25 spot in the country.

“It was truly an incredible experience,” Faux said. “Never in my life have I been to a meet with such energy and fans who are so enthusiastic about the sport. Behind the blocks, looking at Olympic champions and world record holders just a few lanes over from mine is something that I will never forget for the rest of my life.”

In addition, the meet ignited Faux with even greater motivation for next season.

“Now, with NCAA experience under my belt, I know exactly what I need to do differently to get there,” Faux said. “Comparing my swim to others at the NCAA level really highlights my strengths and weaknesses, so now it’s time to try to minimize those weaknesses to get as close as possible to that perfect.”

“We know that he can do better than that,” assistant coach Jamie Holder said of Faux’s race. “But it just gives us something to strive for next year.”

The sub-potential swim in no way detracts from the rest of Faux’s season. He took second in the 50 free and was a member of two winning relays at Ivies, helping Princeton secure the championship title by a giant 211 points.

“My season as a whole far exceeded my expectations,” Faux explained. “In a sense, it may be a good thing that I ended this season with a subpar performance, because now I’m hungrier than ever for next season to train harder than ever before, drop more time and finish my career with an All-American performance.”

Stiff competition was not Faux’s only opposition at the meet.

Ohio health officials say that 19 people fell ill from norovirus, a cause of gastrointestinal illness, which they may have contracted on an American Airlines flight to Columbus. The 18 swimmers and one coach from three schools were all treated at a Columbus hospital before being released, but the start of the meet was pushed back from Thursday to Friday.

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Tapering for swim meets is a science — every day is planned out with painstaking attention to detail so that athletes peak at exactly the right time. But due to the delay, tapers and mindsets were tampered with. And after thriving off of the support of his teammates all season, Faux had to motivate himself alone.

“It definitely gets a little lonely at times — especially watching the relays, which in my opinion are the most exciting races of the meet,” Faux said. “It would have been awesome to have three other guys there to put together a relay. It’s always nice at other meets to have your teammates to talk to so that you’re not constantly focused on the race. You do most of your thinking and concentrating during practice, but at meets you have to learn to turn your brain off and just let your body do what it’s been trained to do all season. Not having teammates to talk to about nonsense with made me think a lot more than I would have liked.”

But once again, Faux has channeled this disappointment into a positive: “Next year, I am confident we will be able to send a decent-sized team and make a statement to the rest of the country,” he said.

Holder agreed. “Getting a couple relays qualified for NCAAs is definitely something we want to get back to for next season, as well as more individuals,” he said.