The women's swimming and diving team competed in its last meet of the semester on Friday and Saturday at the MIT Invitational.
The meet featured Div. III swimming powerhouses MIT and NYU, as well as fellow NESCAC schools Colby and Bowdoin, in a seven-team field. Despite the high level of competition, Tufts posted an impressive third-place overall finish with a total of 564 points, behind only NYU and the hosts, who tallied 1,308 points for the victory.
"We got to race some teams like NYU and MIT that are really fast that we wouldn't normally get to race because they're not in our NESCAC conference," freshman Kathryn Coniglio said. "These teams are all shaved and tapered [and we are not], so it's really fun when we beat them and it's a real confidence boost going into the second half of the season."
Some teams, such as NYU and MIT, are already tapered and wearing fastskins in meets, which gives them a significant advantage and decreases their times dramatically. Tufts waits until later in the season to make these adjustments, and hence, the third-place finish is very promising for the Jumbos.
Tufts scored more than three times as many points as Colby and almost twice as many as Bowdoin, two teams that they will be competing with at the end of the season in the NESCAC championships.
"Even though we had a tough week with a meet on Wednesday and three sessions of the MIT Invitational, and were racing girls who were tapered and wearing fastskins, we still had some great swims, which is a really good sign for later in the season," sophomore Mia Greenwald said.
The Jumbos' success was largely due to the performance of their relay teams. Two of those squads — the 200-yard medley and 200-yard freestyle — have been a consistent source of points for the Jumbos all season, and the MIT meet was no different.
The 200-yard freestyle relay team of seniors Courtney Adams and PaulinaZiolek and freshmen Sam Sliwinski and Coniglio delivered the Jumbos' best result of the meet, placing third with a time of 1:39.20.
Tufts had four other top-five relay finishes at MIT that propelled them to their third-place overall finish. Adams and Coniglio were joined by sophomores Jenny Hu and Greenwald for the 200- and 400-yard medley relays, earning fourth-place finishes in both. The foursome missed third place in the 200-yard medley relay by just seven-hundredths of a second.
"The chemistry on our relay team is awesome; we are all getting really comfortable with each other," Coniglio said.
Sliwinski, Adams, Coniglio and junior Christine Garvey finished fifth in the 800-yard freestyle relay with a time of 8:09.11. The Jumbos also had success in the 400-yard freestyle relay, where Sliwinski, Adams and Coniglio were joined by freshman Scarlett Hao, and their touch at 3:41.73 was good enough for fourth.
Greenwald, who has had a tremendous year so far, was the Jumbos' best overall performer at the meet. In addition to contributing to the relay teams' success, Greenwald placed third in the 200-yard butterfly with a time of 2:13.15 and finished fourth in the 100-yard butterfly with a time of 59.27. Her third-place finish in the 200-yard fly was the only top-three individual finish for the Jumbos in the meet.
Sophomore Sami Bloom had another strong performance in the diving events for Tufts, ranking fifth in both the one- and three-meter dives, with scores of 208.85 and 208.75 respectively.
Bloom has consistently performed well this season. She swept the one- and three-meter dives in the first two meets of the season, and among a talented field of divers at the MIT Invitational, Bloom was still able to record top five finishes in both events.
The Jumbos' third place finish at the MIT Invitational is a fitting end to a great first half of the season. In recent years, the team has struggled at the beginning of the season before reaching their full potential after the break, but they have broken from that tradition this winter. Tufts heads into the midseason hiatus at 3-1 and has already topped Conn. College for the first time since the 2005-2006 season.
"Generally we taper better than any team in the NESCAC," Greenwald said. "But we went into this year with the goal to have a better in-season record as well, not only to have times that will be seeded better at NESCACs, but also to let every other team know that we're serious competition."
The Jumbos will now have a month off from competitive action before returning to the pool for the second half of their season on Jan. 14, in a tri-meet against Williams and host Wesleyan.
