The men's swimming and diving team finished off its regular dual-meet schedule on Saturday, bringing its NESCAC season record to 9-1 with an easy 150-100 win over Bates.
In an anti-climactic end to the 2005-2006 regular season, the Jumbos dominated the Bobcats, placing first in 15 out of 16 events against an eight-man Bates squad. Once again this season, the meet stopped recording events after the score became too lopsided. Many Tufts swimmers had their times earmarked "exhibition," allowing them to race but not to score points for their team with their high finishes.
"It was good to use [the Bates meet] to condition some of our swimmers [going into the post-season]," senior quad-captain Marc Katz said. "We knew they were a small team, but our coach reminded us before the event that we don't just want to leave Tufts [for the post season] having swum a race, but actually having swum hard. And we did."
Sophomores Drew Curhan, Jeff Goldberg and Jon Fichman, as well as junior Carlo Jacob all made contributions towards the Jumbos' final tally, scoring points in races that in the past have been controlled by upperclassmen teammates.
Junior Justin Fanning was particularly impressive, swimming as part of the first-place 200-yard medley relay team and winning the 500-yard freestyle event.
"[Fanning] has been swimming really well lately, and he has a real sense of how he belongs to the team," senior quad-captain Jason Kapit said. "He takes it all very seriously, and it's showing."
In fact, Fanning has been drawing praises from many of his teammates for a few weeks now, after markedly decreasing his times since the team's training trip to Florida during the winter break.
"Coming out of [the training trip to Florida], his times have just been dropping," Kinsella said. "He dropped two seconds off his [200 freestyle] time against Wesleyan [on Jan. 15], and nearly another two against Boston College a week later."
Rather than the nine or ten upperclassman that have typically dominated meets this season, the new faces headlining this weekend's races for the Jumbos were a highlight of the meet.
"It was nice to be able to mix it up at this point, especially for the guys who were shaving for [the first post season meet at] Middlebury," Katz said, referring to the process of swimmers shaving down in hopes of shaving precious tenths of seconds off their times. "For the guys who are tapering for Middlebury, they got a chance to swim their best events, and other guys got to swim events that aren't necessarily their best ones. It wasn't really a warm-up for Middlebury as much as it was a last hurrah."
"Tapering" refers to wholesale changes in swimmers' daily lives and swim practices before important meets, in order to allow their bodies to be healthy and fully rested going into their next competition. The swimmers ultimately try to rest their legs, avoid staying up late hours, and eat healthier so as to increase their performance potential.
The team has already been designated into two groups, one which will prepare for the Middlebury Invitational this weekend and the other which will ready itself for the NESCAC Championships at the end of February.
