Men's Swimming and Diving falls short of record sixth straight title

Men’s swimming and diving picked up four wins at this weekend’s Ivy League championships but fell to Harvard 1495-1413. Princeton held a five-year win streak coming into the meet, but the Crimson was able to defend its home pool with nine event wins. The Tigers never got within 50 points after falling into a 105-point deficit after day one. Third-place Penn’s Chris Swanson won Swimmer of the Meet after winning the 500- and 1,650-yard freestyle events and placing second in the 1,000.

Day one saw Princeton’s best event of the meet amid some of its worst performances. The sophomore trio of Teo D’Alessandro, Marco Bove and Byron Sanborn swept the 200m individual medley, with D’Alessandro setting the pool record at 1:45.45. Meanwhile in the 500m freestyle, freshman Sam Smiddy’s sixth-place finish was the only Tiger performance to achieve double-digit points. In the 50m free, Harvard took four of the top six spots, and junior Harrison Wagner was unable to defend his title in the event, finishing fifth.

Princeton won three events on day two but could only shrink the deficit to 82 points, as the score stood 1011-929. The medley success from Thursday rolled into Friday as the Tigers won the 200m relay and Smiddy won the 400-yard individual event, both with pool records. Junior Michael Strand made himself a double winner by defending his 100m backstroke title in near school-record time after contributing a leg on the relay. Wagner, Bove and junior Connor Maher joined him on the relay and each scored in the A final for his individual events. Still, Harvard took five of the top seven spots in the 200m free to maintain a safe lead.

Princeton and Harvard tied with 484 points apiece on the final day after the Crimson topped off its meet-winning performance with a near-NCAA A-cut and 2:53.64 in the 400m freestyle relay. It was one of four Crimson winning performances, highlighted by Jack Manchester’s meet record of 1:42.62 in the 200m backstroke. Right behind him in Princeton record time was sophomore En-Wei Hu-Van Wright, who ended up with 75 individual points in the meet, the highest total of any Tiger. The top individual performance of the meet was Brown’s Thomas Glenn, swimming 1:42.35 in the 200 fly, good for a meet record and eighth-fastest in the NCAA.

Senior captains Daniel Hasler and Mark O’Connell capped their careers with 72 and 51 points, respectively. Hasler finished fifth, sixth and seventh in the 400 individual medley, 100m breast and 200m breast, while O’Connell took a career-best second in the three-meter diving and seventh in the one-meter. NCAAs are three-and-a-half weeks away in Austin, Texas, though no Tigers have yet achieved the marks necessary to qualify.