Throughout the 2005-2006 season, Chloe Young-Hyman leading the Tufts swimming and diving team was almost a given. She spearheaded the Jumbos' fourth place finish at NESCACs and routinely won or scored highly in multiple events each meet.
And the junior will have the chance to do it again, on the sport's biggest stage, as she travels to Minneapolis this weekend to compete in the Div. III National Championships.
Young-Hyman's best opportunity for a high finish will likely be in the 100-yard breaststroke today, her main event. She will also swim in the 50 freestyle on Friday and the 100 freestyle on Saturday.
"I want to have fun," Young-Hyman said. "I want to try my best and see what happens."
For each event, the trials take place in the morning, after which the top 16 swimmers advance to a final later in the day. The top eight swimmers from the preliminaries compete in the championship final, with the other eight competing in the consolation.
Young-Hyman only qualified individually in the 100-yard breaststroke, but by virtue of qualifying in one event, a swimmer is allowed to swim two others. Her seed time of 1:06.94, her fifth-place time from the NESCAC finals, put her in a tie for eighteenth.
Typically between 15 and 19 swimmers receive Nationals bids in each event, so Young-Hyman knew a bid was far from guaranteed. With her seed time in the 100 breaststroke, she has an excellent chance to break into the consolation final and earn honorable mention All-American honors, and an outside chance to crack the top eight.
Young-Hyman is also seeded 35th at 53.96 in the 100 freestyle. The 16th-place swimmer is 0.8 seconds ahead of her, so she would need a breakout performance to reach the finals. In her final event, the 50 freestyle, Young-Hyman is seeded 43rd with a time of 25.12 seconds.
Young-Hyman's national trip closes out an excellent season, both for her individually, and for the entire Tufts' women's swimming and diving team.
"Personally, I had a fantastic season, the best one of my entire life," Young-Hyman said.
Her achievements this season speak for themselves. She qualified for Nationals for the first time and swam personal bests in the 100 breaststroke by a second and the 100 freestyle by over 2.5 seconds, a significant time in a race that lasts less than a minute. On a team level, the Jumbos' surpassed their goals, finishing fourth in NESCACs, with most swimmers on the team set a personal best in some event.
The swimmer to watch in this meet is Williams senior Lindsay Payne, who will be swimming in the 100 and 200 breaststroke and the 200 individual medley. Payne is seeded first in both breaststroke events by over 3.5 seconds, and she already owns the NCAA records in both events, after dominating in the NESCAC Championships. Her talent is broadly distributed, as she is also seeded third in the 200 medley, less than a second behind the leader. Her graduation this year will mark the end of a four-year reign on both the regional and national level.
