After the first five events at this weekend's NESCAC Tournament at Williams College, the women's swimming and diving team was in first place, ahead of both Amherst, which has finished in second place three years running, and the host Ephs, who have won every conference title since the NESCAC's inception. Yet toppling the two conference goliaths ultimately proved too tall an order for a Tufts team that had to be content, at least for now, with finishing third.
"We came in really wanting to get third, and on Friday girls swam out of their minds," senior tri-captain Megan Kono said. "Everyone was making it into finals, or consolation finals. Everybody contributed to the third-place finish."
The Jumbos broke a school record and racked up six national ‘B' qualifying times — which do not guarantee a spot at nationals but allow a chance to be selected — on this furious Friday. The meet included a fifth-place finish from Kono in the 500-yard freestyle (5:02.43) and a national B-cut worthy showing in the 400 medley relay from freshmen Andrea Coniglio, Mia Greenwald, Jenny Hu and junior Courtney Adams (3:58.38). The school-record-breaking performance came in the 50-yard backstroke from sophomore K.J. Kroetch in a time of 28.30 seconds.
By Saturday, Tufts had slipped behind Williams and Amherst in the standings, and the team was focused on beating out Conn. College and Bates for third place. A second-place finish from Hu with a time of 1:06.28 in the 100-yard breaststroke helped the Jumbos stay ahead of their rivals, as did Kono's second-place showing in the 1000-yard freestyle; her time of 10:24.33 was a new school record.
After another stellar performance by Greenwald in the 100-yard butterfly — a new school record at 56.95 seconds — and a school record in the 200 medley relay, Tufts entered Sunday's final events in strong position to finish third overall.
And after another impressive performance from Kono, this time a third-place finish in the 1,650-yard freestyle, as well as a B-cut worthy swim from sophomore Christine Garvey in the 200-yard butterfly and a fourth-place showing off the 3-meter board from freshman diver Sami Bloom, the Jumbos finished the tournament with 1,226 points, good enough to achieve their goal of third place. Williams won the tournament for the 11th straight year with a record-breaking 1,961 points.
"We fought it out with Conn. for a while, and I think [third place] came down to the final 400 free relay and the diving," Kono said. "A lot of other schools have these star players, but what's great about this team is the amount of depth we have."
The Jumbos' third-place finish is a step up from last year's fourth-place finish at NESCACs, when Middlebury leapfrogged Tufts into the prized spot. But this weekend only the 13 freshmen on the Panther roster competed, after the Middlebury administration decided earlier this month to suspend all of its upperclassmen amid allegations of hazing abuse.
"They definitely had some good first-years, but they also have good depth and a lot of great upperclassmen [that missed the meet]," junior Valerie Eacret said. "They're generally our closest rivals, but we had a lot of other competition."
The young Panthers still finished in 10th, ahead of Bowdoin and Trinity, though they had too few swimmers to compete in every relay.
"Midd. was hurting. It's disappointing for everyone that [the whole team] couldn't swim," Kono said. "In my mind we still would have been able to beat them outright, but it's just something that we didn't get to see."
For most of the Jumbos, the season is now over, while those who earned provisional ‘B' marks will wait patiently to find out whether they have been selected to swim at nationals, which will take place in Tennessee in late March. Kono and Greenwald are both among those expected to have a legitimate chance to qualify.
"No one knows [who will be selected] at this point because other conference meets are still happening," Eacret said. "It's mostly based on last year's selection times, but right now for the B-cuts there's no way to know."
