For a few select members of the Tufts men's swimming and diving team this week, there will be no poring over notes, no taking tests, and no yawning through classes.
Right now, they have a much more demanding task at hand.
Seven Tufts swimmers are currently in Minneapolis, Minn., as members of the Jumbos' largest delegation to NCAA Div. III National Swimming and Diving Championships in recent history, a meet at which the Jumbos hope to make a name for themselves.
"We want to go there and show people we're for real," junior Mike Kinsella said. "Tufts hasn't been on the map enough lately, especially at the national level. I remember when I was a freshman, and we only had one relay team and me swimming [in an individual race]. Now, there are seven of us, and with that we can really do something."
Kinsella is joined by senior quad-captains Jason Kapit and Brett Baker, senior Jon Godsey, juniors Justin Fanning and Greg Bettencourt, and freshman Andrew Shields. The seven all swam on Thursday, and will continue today and Saturday as part of the three-day event.
Results are mixed thus far, as only six of the events in which the Jumbos are competing have taken place, with select results coming in late last night. Bettencourt, who entered the meet with a No. 5 seed in the 500 free, finished seventh in his preliminary run to earn as trip to the finals, where he swam a 4:35.81, two and a half seconds slower than his seed time but good enough for eighth in the nation.
The 200 free relay team of Kinsella, Shields, Kapit and Baker, entered the meet seeded ninth in the nation with a time of 1:23.51, but dropped slightly on Thursday in the preliminaries, swimming 1:24.18 for the 13th spot.
Several other individuals and relays boast top-20 seed times. Godsey is seventh in the 200 back and 18th in the 100 back. In the 200 free, Bettencourt and Baker are neighbors at 12th and 13th, separated by just .01 seconds.
The Jumbos' strength extends to their relays as well. The 800 free relay holds the team's highest ranking, a No. 4 seed courtesy of the 6:49.04 set at the NESCAC championships that shattered the previous school record.
The 400 medley relay ranks No. 11. It dropped slightly to 12th in the preliminaries yesterday. The 200 medley relay held the No. 14 spot, but fell to 34th in the preliminaries and missed the finals.
The rest of the Nationals results were not available by the print deadline, but will be covered after spring break.
The heavy favorite for the national title is Kenyon, the epitome of a swimming powerhouse. In addition to sending the maximum 18 every season, Kenyon has won the national championship for the last 26 consecutive seasons.
"[Kenyon is] amazing," Kapit said. "But looking at us this year and our numbers, we're walking around [the meet] with our heads high as well."
Tufts has one of its best teams in recent memory, and it raised eyebrows after handily beating Amherst and taking a program-best second-place finish at the NESCAC Championship meet last month at Williams. In a 2005-06 season that included just one dual-meet loss (to eventual NESCAC champion Williams) and a record seven-swimmer group heading to Nationals, the Tufts swimmers have good reason to be both confident and relaxed as they swim against top competition.
"We have more people than we did last year, so it's more fun," Baker said. "You can imagine, having five more people [than last year's two-man delegation] is five more people to yell at, cheer for, those things. And this was all part of our goals, getting more guys at Nationals. We geared everything towards the NESCAC [Championship meet], and the Nationals are like icing on the cake."
Bettencourt, who played a hand in six second-place finishes at the NESCAC Championships, was equally as ebullient.
"It has been a dream season," Bettencourt said. "This year, I've just wanted to come back to the pool every day. That's the vibe we're all getting. We went to NESCACs [last month at Williams] and pretty much drove a train right through. Everyone was up for it."
Tufts' only nemesis this year was Williams, the NESCAC champion, the only team to beat Tufts in the regular season, and NESCAC's most represented school at Nationals, with 12 swimmers taking part in this weekend's 60-team meet.
"Williams probably can finish in the top four," Kapit said. "They're one of the teams with the most swimmers. But we're not in a bad spot either. We're in a good position to finish within the top 20, and we're aiming for the top 10."
In each race, the top sixteen swimmers or relay teams will score points for their teams. Yet despite the nerve-wracking nature of such elite competition, the swimmers insisted they were calm and just excited to be granted the honor in the first place.
"I'm a lot less nervous than I thought I'd be," Kapit said. "I sort of look at myself and I've really been training for this for 11 or so years. I've gone through four years of college swimming. I guess we've been waiting for this for a while."
Bettencourt summed things up well:
"We're ready to rock."
