Swimmers focus on regaining Ivy title from Harvard

Men’s swimming: Remarkable recruiting class inspires confidence

At last season’s Ivy League Championships, rival Harvard broke Princeton’s five-year streak of consecutive conference titles. A regrettable end to what had been an impressive campaign will not, however, deter this year’s squad of swimmers.

“Coming off last season’s championship loss, the confidence level was a bit low,” men’s senior captain Oliver Bennett explained. “But we have an incredible recruiting class. It was in the top 10 nationally with a number of top-tier recruits who have already come in and made a huge impact. With that we know we can really strike.”

The latest coaches’ poll ranks Princeton 22ndin the nation. Somehow, this small, non-scholarship New Jersey school competes with the nation’s largest and best-funded athletic departments.

According to Bennett, a great deal of his program’s strength can be attributed to its head coach, Rob Orr. Having taken the reins in 1979, the Princeton skipper is one win away from 300 career victories.

“He’s a guy you wake up every morning wanting to swim for,” Bennett said. “Not very many teams have that type of motivator down at the pool.”

During the course of his remarkable career, Orr competed against Mark Spitz in the 1972 NCAA butterfly final, finishing No. 5 in the event. He was selected to serve as U.S. head coach at the 1991 Olympic Festival. (This Cold War-spawned event was discontinued in 1995.) Fifty -nine All-Americans emerged from Princeton under Orr’s tutelage, including a 1990 NCAA championship relay team which set the record for American swimmers.

SwimSwam.com, a national swimming news outlet, ranks Orr’s most recent recruiting class No. 6 nationally, just behind Stanford’s. Freshman Corey Okubo highlights this standout eight-man class. The Olympic Trials in 2012 saw the California native compete in four events and finish No. 18in the 200 fly.

“He’s probably one of the best recruits Princeton has ever had,” Bennett said. “He missed our fall break training trip to Florida to swim with Team USA at the World Cup in Japan, which is pretty awesome.”

Bennett added of his freshmen, “All of the guys are really fast. There’s not one of them who couldn’t come in and make an impact, which is huge. Ben Schafer, a sprinter from Australia, is a sprinter who started turning heads right away. And Zach Buerger’s another big recruit of ours out of Pittsburgh who’s been impressive in the backstroke, butterfly and freestyle.”

Looking to the Princeton’s challenging schedule, no conference matchup can be taken for granted, with parity having been the watchword of this nascent season. After finishing dead-last in the 2014-15 finals, Cornell very nearly pulled off an upset of Harvard while simultaneously crushing Dartmouth.

When asked which Ivy League matchups he expected to be particularly challenging, Bennett replied, “All of them. Columbia beat Penn, with Penn having beaten them at Ivies last year. So it’s been a competitive season so far. But always, our main focus is on Harvard. They’re the guys we swim to beat every day.”

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Beyond the immediate goal of reclaiming the Ivy League title, the Tigers have their eyes on representing their school at the national finals.

Senior captain Michael Strand and junior Teo D’Alessandro, both of whom narrowly missed out on qualifying for last year’s NCAA championship, will travel to Greensboro, N.C., for the AT&T Winter National Championship in the first week of December. Should they maintain their early season form, it is possible that they will receive an early qualification for this year’s national finals, which will be held in Iowa City, Iowa, during the final weekend of March.

Among other returners, juniors Byron Sanborn and Marco Bove, as well as senior Harrison Wagner, have improved their already impressive times as upperclassmen, according to Bennett. Sanborn and D’Alessandro picked up three wins for Princeton in last weekend’s away meet, with the former topping the 200 breaststroke and the latter taking first in the 500 free and 200 IM.

Should the Princeton men return to the top spot in the conference, it will mark the eighth time in the past decade that the Tigers have swum to the top of the Ivy League.

Women’s swimming: Larson leads Tigers in attempt to regain Ivy crown

Princeton’s women swimmers fell to Harvard in the 2012 Ivy League finals. The following season, they topped a competitive 2013 championship field to take in a come-from-behind victory in front of a home crowd. This past season, in spite of a meet-high 92 points from Princeton’s senior Lisa Boyce, the Crimson retook the crown with 1409 points to the Tigers’ 1384. It will be the task of this 2014-15 Princeton team to continue its vengeful tradition and reclaim the Ancient Eight title.

Boyce, who graduated with the class of 2014, concluded one of her program’s finest careers with a first-team All-America performance at last year’s NCAA Championships, finishing No. 7 in the 100 fly finals.

Boyce was not the lone Tiger to compete in Columbus, Ohio, last season. Sophomore Nikki Larson earned her first NCAA Championship berth, having qualified for the 100- and 200-yard butterfly races.

Competing in the 200 fly on Saturday, Larson posted an identical time of 1:58.73 to Virginia’s Alison Haulsee, tying her for 38^th in the event. She also raced in Friday’s 100 fly – she held the Princeton record in the event for a period last year – a number of heats before Boyce. In the shorter race on Friday she recorded a time of 53.91, good for 53^rd.

This past weekend in Columbus, facing Denison University and nationally-ranked Ohio State University, Larson took first place in the 100 fly. The junior will return as Princeton’s top swimmer, but her side will benefit greatly from the addition of recruiting class ranked inside the top five nationally. Freshman Alisabeth Marsteller earned key points with a No. 2 in the 500 free and a No. 3 in the 200 IM.

Similar to the men, Princeton’s female swimmers have experienced excellent coaching, courtesy of Susan Teeter. Entering her 31stseason at the helm, the Tennessee native serves as the College Swimming Coaches Association of America’s president. This post honors her longtime exemplary leadership, which has produced 16 Ivy League championships and a .799 winning percentage.

Both the men’s and women’s teams will open their Ivy League season this weekend at home against Penn and Cornell, two squads whom the Tigers should face confidently. Looking forward, reigning champion Harvard will host both the Harvard-Yale-Princeton meet in late January and the Ivy Championships in February.