While Saturday may not have been the first time the men's swimming and diving team placed between Williams and Wesleyan at the teams' tri-meet, beating out Wesleyan but falling to the powerhouse Ephs, the stats were a little bit different this year.
"What may be overlooked is that we only lost by 23 points, which is significantly less than the 78 points we lost by last year at the same meet," senior quad-captain James Longhurst said.
In its first NESCAC meet since Nov. 22, Tufts easily handled the Cardinals 232-55, shifting the focus of the meet to the matchup between Williams and Tufts.
"Usually this tri-meet between Wesleyan and Williams ... puts us right in the middle of both teams, but this year we only lost by 23 points to Williams, which is the closest meet we've had against them in the past four years," senior quad-captain Andrew Shields said. "We definitely made a great statement against the strongest team in the NESCAC that we will be coming for them at the end of February at Championships."
The only event that Wesleyan won was the three-meter dive, in which the Cardinals' Dave Wilkinson beat Tufts junior All-American Rob Matera by 6.05 points. Matera, for whom the loss was the first in the three-meter event all season, still managed to hold off the Cardinals in the one-meter dive, taking first place while Wesleyan dove into second, third and fourth.
The highlights of the meet for the Jumbos were the relay events. In the first event of the meet, the 200-yard medley relay, the Jumbos set the tone by taking first and second place. In the 400-freestyle relay, the meet's final event, Tufts took first and third, finishing on a high note.
"I cannot remember in my four years of swimming at Tufts ever beating a Williams A-relay, and our A and B 200 medley-relays beat Williams' A as did our A-team in the 400-free," Longhurst said. "The fact that our A and B-relays are so fast shows the depth that our team has, which is needed to be a contender for first place in the NESCAC. But we still take it one meet at a time."
The Jumbos also swept the podium of the 50-yard freestyle event, with freshman Owen Rood, sophomore Gordy Jenkins and Shields filling out the top three spots, respectively. Rood continued to show his dominance over sprint events by taking first in the 100-yard freestyle and anchoring Tufts' A team in the 400-freestyle, posting the fastest split in the entire event.
"Going 1-2-3 in the 50-freestyle definitely showed off our strengths in the sprint freestyles," Shields said.
"[The result] bodes extremely well for NESCACs, especially considering the addition of 50-yard events at NESCACs and the fact that we are strongest at most of the shorter events," Longhurst added.
Next up, Tufts faces a difficult weekend, with meets against Division I teams MIT on Saturday and BU on Sunday. The Jumbos competed against MIT earlier in the season, placing third out of seven in the annual MIT Invitational, where the host Engineers took first place.
"Having spent two weeks in Florida training really hard over break, it feels good to get back into competition and race against fast swimmers," senior quad-captain Ben Moskowitz said. "Having swum against MIT lets us really know what we are up against and it will be a tough meet, but we have been working incredibly hard and are just looking forward to really putting everything we've got on the table and hopefully we'll come out with a win."
"MIT has a very fast pool, and we actually swim more meets at MIT than in our own home pool, so we are very used to the environment there," Shields said. "It should be a very close, fast meet that will undoubtedly get us ready again for the type of competition we'll be seeing at championships at the end of February."
