Although there is no "I" in "team," there are definitely a few in "national championship."
With all but three members of the women's swimming and diving team done competing, the focus now turns to individual performances at the NCAA Div. III meet, set to be held at the end of next week at the University Aquatic Center in Minneapolis.
Senior tri-captain Katie Swett, sophomore Megan Kono and junior diver Lindsay Gardel will be the only three donning Tufts colors at the University of Minnesota, but after a historic run through the regular season and the NESCAC meet, the team has high expectations for the trio. Last year, the team also sent three to Nationals and placed 25th.
Gardel seems to have the best shot at placing for Tufts, as she already has two All-American honors under her belt. Last year, she finished with an honorable mention score in the 3-meter dive, placing 12th. She would have likely been among the top 16 in the 1-meter as well but was penalized for performing the wrong dive.
This year, Gardel got off to a fast start, qualifying in the 1-meter in just the third meet of the season, a Dec. 3 matchup with Wellesley College. At the NCAA meet, she will return for competition in both events, seeking to improve upon last year's performance in which she garnered five points for Tufts' team score. Still, she will have to follow in the footsteps of Kendall Swett (LA '08), who broke her own NCAA record last year in the 3-meter dive and won both diving events.
In her first NCAA meet last season, Kono placed 21st in the 500-yard freestyle and 29th in the 200-yard freestyle. Later in the meet, she finished 19th in the 1,650-yard freestyle, just three spots short of All-American honors. Still, the sophomore is far from content with that finish.
"Last year, I didn't want to be that person who talked the talk but couldn't walk the walk," Kono said. "I didn't have a team going with me, so just having such a large group with me this year is great. Last year, I think it was just [that] I didn't want to say my goals out loud or what I thought I was capable of. When I got to NCAAs, I didn't know what to do."
Kono comes in as the top swimming qualifier for the Jumbos, having blown away the competition in the 1,650-yard freestyle at the NESCAC Championships in February. Kono won by over 25 seconds, posting an NCAA A-cut time of 17:11.91. Additionally, Kono improved upon her own school-record time of 17:31.6 and surpassed the NESCAC Championships mark of 17:13.20 set by Middlebury's Sara Cowie in 2006.
Kono will go up against a stacked field in the mile swim, including her sister Kelly, who is a senior at Washington University in St. Louis. New York University freshman Margaret Rippe will lead the pack, with a seed time over six seconds ahead of the nearest competitor. Nonetheless, Kono's time places her seventh, while her sister is seeded 19th in the 21-person field.
Additionally, Kono narrowly earned a spot in the 500-yard freestyle, squeaking out a 5:01.21 B-cut time, which gave her the 20th seed by seven hundredths of a second. Kono secured her place by breaking a 20-year-old Tufts record in the event at NESCACs but ended up finishing fifth in the finals.
"Megan is in a much better place than she was last year," coach Nancy Bigelow said. "[Last year], she didn't really have that confidence and verbally doubted her abilities a lot. With the increased confidence she's gotten this year, I think she really can do a great job."
Even though Kono is seeded relatively lower than what she has grown accustomed to in recent meets, the sophomore is no stranger to a challenge. In the 1,650-yard freestyle at the NESCAC meet, for instance, she entered as the No. 2 seed by over 12 seconds but improved on her seed time by 48 seconds.
Swett, likewise, utilized a few outstanding NESCAC Championship swims to catapult her into next week's meet. The senior qualified in the 400-yard IM, in which she is seeded 17th. While the majority of the other swimmers in the event are cluttered around the 4:32 mark, a pair of Williams swimmers, including national record-holder senior Amanda Nicholson, sit atop the leaderboard and seem to have a perennial stranglehold on the event. At the NESCAC meet, Swett turned in her qualifying 4:32.37 time, which was just under 12 seconds behind the first-place Nicholson.
"It's an honor to be able to go and an honor to compete," Swett said. "I'm hoping to just have some fun, but it's a great opportunity that I'm really glad I got. I was training for NESCACs like it was going to be my last race, but this is just a bonus. Getting another best time would be the ultimate goal of mine, but I really just want to race and feed off the energy of the fast pool."
Additionally, Swett narrowly missed the cut in the 200-yard breaststroke and the 200-yard IM, falling out of the top 20 by just three seconds in each event. Still, instead of dwelling on the events she did not qualify for, Swett's scope seems narrowly focused on her last swim in a Tufts uniform.
"Katie has worked so hard, so I think this is just the culmination of a great career for her," Bigelow said. "For someone who wanted to go abroad junior year and then didn't, instead dedicating herself to swimming, this is just icing on the cake for her."
While the number of swimmers training in Hamilton Pool has decreased, the competitive atmosphere is certainly still evident. With Gardel training at nearby MIT, Kono and Swett are left to push each other as the March 18 preliminaries inch closer and closer.
"It's definitely hard to train with fewer people, and it makes it a little more intense because the coaches are focused exclusively on you for the whole two hours," Swett said. "It's harder because the team is not there every day to push you, but last year, it was just Megan, so from what I can tell, she's happy to have another training partner."
"Katie and I have definitely gotten closer because she came in this year with the work ethic that this was going to be the best season she ever had," Kono said. "We would always call each other over Christmas break, so to see her go out there and work so hard, I really admire that. She's definitely one of my greatest supports swimming, so to have her be there with me is just amazing."
But if the third-place finish the Jumbos posted at NESCACs -- the best finish in the nine-year history of the meet for Tufts -- is any indication, the NCAA meet should be just another check mark on the list of accomplishments for Bigelow's squad and a memorable experience for the three Jumbos competing.
