The men's swimming and diving team entered the 2005-2006 season looking to prove themselves on the regional and national stage.
Done.
Topping off the spectacle that was the 2005-06 season, the final seven Jumbo swimmers competing at the 2006 NCAA National Championship meet gave Tufts its highest finish at Nationals in 25 years, a 10th place overall finish out of the 53 schools. Over the three-day meet, the Jumbos scored a total of 119.5 points while earning All-American honors in five events and honorable mention All-American honors in four more.
"We were very happy," said senior Jon Godsey, one of the seven Jumbos present in Minnesota. "We had really wanted to be in the top 10, and it ended up coming down to our last relay [the 400-yard freestyle relay]. We moved up a spot in the standings, and the 11th place team [Gustavus Adolphus] didn't, so we took 10th place."
The hits just kept on coming, as the Jumbos set five new school records at the meet. The Jumbos' 800-yard freestyle relay set a new Tufts best and junior Greg Bettencourt broke the school's 500-yard freestyle record.
Yet it was Godsey who had the standout performance, setting school records in the 200-yard backstroke, the 100-yard backstroke and the 200-yard IM, and earning All-American honors in the first two.
"Going into the meet I felt better than I did at [the NESCAC Championships]," Godsey said. "I had high hopes for myself. As a whole, we were pretty focused going into the meet. Right off the bat, the first morning we were there we swam fast, faster than at the NESCACs. So we realized we had the potential."
Three seniors, three juniors and one freshman made up the Tufts squad at Nationals, which took place at the University of Minnesota. Senior quad-captains Jason Brett Baker, Kapit, and Godsey; juniors Bettencourt, Mike Kinsella and Justin Fanning; and freshman Andrew Shields all represented Tufts at the event hosted by Carleton College.
Aside from individual honors, the Jumbo relay teams fared well also -- both the Jumbos' 200-yard medley team (consisting of Godsey, Kinsella, Bettencourt and Shields), as well as the Jumbos' 400-yard freestyle relay (consisting of Baker, Bettencourt, Fanning and Shields) earned honorable mention all-American honors.
In addition, Kinsella notched 40th overall and Baker 51st overall in the 50-yard freestyle, swimming times of 21.43 and 21.77, respectively. Baker clinched 19th overall and Bettencourt 39th overall in the 100-yard freestyle event with times of 46.22 and 47.91, while Kapit claimed 30th place in the 200-yard butterfly with a time of 1:55.54.
"[Godsey, Baker] and I were talking, and we decided that the most amazing aspect of this was that coming in as freshmen we had no one make Nationals," Kapit said. "We could never have foreseen that we would have been standing at Nationals with seven of us, competing for one of the top 10 spots in the country. Having come from so far, and achieving so much, it's one of the best feelings I've ever had in athletics."
But with the results the Jumbos put up during the season, there was no doubt that they belonged.
In addition to their finish at Nationals, the Jumbos landed a highest-ever second-place finish at the NESCAC Championship meet at Williams last month, achieved a 9-1 overall dual-meet record in the regular season, set nine school records, and second-year coach Adam Hoyt won the NESCAC Coach of the Year award for the 2005-2006 season.
Williams, a head above the rest of the league, was the only team to get the best of the deep and talented Jumbo squad. With the Ephs holding a lock on the top spot at NESCACs, the Jumbos were in a tight race with Amherst for second heading into the league championship. But Tufts rode its extraordinary depth to 1522 points, edging out the Lord Jeffs by 168 points.
Godsey was the only Jumbo to win an individual race, but the Jumbos combated Amhersts' four individual victories with 21 finishes between second and sixth place. This depth was on display as the seven-man contingent to Nationals was a program record.
And riding the high from NESCACs straight to a top-10 Nationals finish, the Jumbos have more than proved themselves.
"It has been fantastic," Godsey said. "It's a nice way to end the swimming career, after having done the sport for 15 years or so. It's a storybook ending."
