The women's swimming and diving team kept its early-season success going this weekend, taking second place at the MIT Invitational.
The host Engineers, who finished 20th at Div. III Nationals last year, took the top spot, finishing way ahead of the pack with a score of 910.5. Tufts scored 783 points, and the remaining four teams were left in the dust, with Wheaton tallying 558.5 points for third place and fourth-place Bowdoin scoring 558.
The meet was much closer than the final scores indicated, however, and the Jumbos were still pleasantly surprised with their finishes.
"I was very impressed with how we did," senior tri-captain Monika Burns said. "I thought it was going to be a lot closer with Bowdoin and Colby, especially because Bowdoin had beaten MIT in their dual meet this year ... I was just surprised with how fast all the teams were. There was no one team that was dominating. MIT did beat us, but they weren't consistently winning everything."
The invitational started off with a Friday afternoon session followed by two sessions on Saturday, one of only two regular-season meets to follow such a drawn-out format. The length of the meet meant that the team had to manage its fatigue.
"It was hard mentally to keep yourself motivated and push away the negative thoughts like how tired you are," sophomore Meredith Cronin said. "Saturday afternoon was the toughest - everyone was tired."
"There was no letdown in terms of effort," Burns added. "Of course, you could tell people had been putting their all in earlier in the invitational, and that showed a little on Saturday night."
Cronin herself showed no fatigue, placing in the top five in each of her four events. She came in third in the 100- and 200-yard backstroke and fourth in the 500 free and the 1,650 freestyle heat.
The relay races also racked up points for Tufts with second-place finishes in the 200-, 400- and 800-yard freestyle relays by the A team. The B team was never too far behind, posting five top-10 finishes.
The talented freshman class kept up its impressive run this season, posting first-place finishes in the 500 free by Megan Kono and the 50 free by Maureen O'Neill.
One other first-place finish came from junior Katie Swett, whose time of 4:47.48 in the 400 IM bested the field. Swett also finished second in the 200 IM with a time of 2:15.59 and fourth in the 100 breaststroke, less than a second behind Bowdoin freshman Caitlin Callahan.
"Katie Swett had a really, really good 400 IM, and she swam really fast overall," Cronin said. "That was really exciting to watch, and it was really motivating for the rest of the team."
The divers also posted strong performances, as senior Kendall Swett and sophomore Lindsay Gardel finished one-two in the 1-meter event with scores of 450.50 and 391.85 respectively. In the 3-meter, Swett took home top honors with a score of 512, way ahead of MIT's Doria Holbrook, who came in second with a score of 504.90. Gardel placed fourth with a score of 362.
In addition to providing national-caliber competition in MIT, the meet allowed Tufts a chance to scout NESCAC rivals Bowdoin and Colby.
"We saw Bowdoin had a lot of fast swimmers this year, so that's going to be a lot more difficult than we thought," Cronin said. "It was nice to race Colby because it's usually really close at NESCACs between us, but we finished ahead of them, which is a great confidence boost."
Due to the high number of events in the invitational, the meet also allowed the team to prepare early on for events that they normally would not have seen until much later on in the season.
"Some of these events, like the 1,650 freestyle heat - there are only three or four chances for people to swim that before the NESCACs, so it really helps [them]," Burns said. "Just for everyone, the more practice you get for an event, the more you get used to it and the better you'll be."
On Saturday the women will head over to Waltham, Mass. for a dual-meet clash with a Brandeis team that finished sixth at MIT. Last season, Brandeis finished 3-7 in dual meets.
