Different season, same result.
The men's swimming and diving team clobbered Trinity 155-112 at home on Sunday and moved to 3-0. Bantam swimmers won just one race in the entire meet and the Jumbos broke two Hamilton Pool records.
The matchup wasn't any closer in the water than it looked to be on paper coming into the weekend. Trinity, which finished ninth at the NESCAC Championships last February (Tufts finished fourth), has only 13 swimmers on its roster compared to the Jumbos' 40, and has lost to the Jumbos each of the last six years. Yet the blowout was the closest the Bantams have come to upending Tufts since 2000, when the Jumbos won 149-117.
In multiple races on Sunday, what amounted to a mercy rule was enforced, whereby the times of the top Tufts swimmers were withheld from official scoring. In cases of extremely lopsided victories, the swimmers' times are simply classified as "exhibition" times, even though the times themselves are official, and are not counted towards their team's score.
Had the scores been counted without the mercy rulings in effect, the final tally would have been a Tufts victory, 220-51.
"They have a pretty small team, and just comparing the number of swimmers [between Tufts and Trinity], it's really not fair," senior quad-captain Brett Baker said. "We still swam really well though."
Senior quad-captain Jason Kapit had an impressive day against the Bantams, winning both the 50 and 100-yard butterfly with times of 24.39 and 53.00, respectively. However, Kapit's 50 yard time wasn't counted towards the point totals because of the mercy rule. His 53.00 in the 100-yard butterfly set a new Hamilton Pool record and was nearly ten seconds faster than the nearest Trinity swimmer, Jeff Yoshida, who placed fifth with a time of 1:02.57.
"The whole team seems to be swimming really fast lately," Kapit said. "I knew I'd been swimming well in practice, but [setting the record] wasn't really on the front of my mind. [Teammate and junior] Greg Bettencourt had the record before me, and he was swimming in the same race when I swam the 100-yard butterfly on Sunday, and that pushed me. If he hadn't been there pushing me, I wouldn't have gotten the record."
Kapit also took part in the 200-yard freestyle relay, which also set a new Hamilton Pool record with a time of 1:27.04. Racing with Kapit on the relay team was Baker, junior Mike Kinsella and freshman Matt Murphy.
Baker himself was notable on Sunday, winning the 100 yard freestyle by nearly three seconds with a time of 48.05 and also swimming as part of the 200-yard medley relay, whose 1:40.19 was over six seconds faster than the second-place team, also a Tufts quartet.
Along with Kapit and Baker, juniors Nathan Cronin and Kinsella and seniors Craig Kelly, Seth Rosenberg, Jon Godsey and Steven Ward all won individual races for the Jumbos, while the Bantams' only victory came from sophomore Jon Fugge, who won the 50 yard freestyle with a time of 22.92 seconds. The Bantams dropped to 0-1, while the Jumbos are headed in the opposite direction.
"I don't think it's unrealistic at all to finish higher [in the NESCAC Championships] than we did last year," Kapit said. "That's our goal. We have a very strong freshman class, and we only had five seniors graduate last year."
The Jumbos' first two wins of the season, victories against both Conn. College and Middlebury on Saturday were also impressive, with Tufts winning 175.5-91.5 and 168-101, respectively.
Like in Sunday's meet, many Jumbo swimmers again had their times marked as exhibition races to prevent an even larger blowout margin on Saturday. However, Middlebury, which finished last year in second-place at the NESCAC Championships and is one of the teams the Jumbos are looking to surpass this season, had many of its top swimmers away at the water-polo championships at Williams, and so the scores from Saturday's meet were likely skewed.
"Middlebury actually has a very strong team; they would've given us a good run for our money if they actually had all their swimmers there," Kapit said. "That would have been quite a close meet. I can't say who would've won if their whole team had shown up."
The Jumbos have a break between now and the end of the Thanksgiving holiday, as they return to the water on Dec. 1 at Babson. The meet is the first in a long stretch on the road, as the team does not have another home meet until Jan. 18, when it will race for the second and final time at Hamilton Pool against Boston College.
