The men's swim team has a goal for this season-to surpass last year's performance.
Actually, it doesn't have much of a choice.
Coming off a winless record last winter, culminating in a last place finish at the Eastern Intercollegiate Swimming League Championships, the team has already exceeded its win output from last year with a 145-128 victory over the University of New Hampshire Nov. 30.
And although one win hardly threatens to shake the ranks of intercollegiate swimming, the team is quietly gaining confidence with its new coach, Jim Wilson.
Wilson came from the University of Utah, where he coached for five years. Before that, he spent a year with the Hong Kong National Team. He led the Utah women's team to its best conference finish ever, and, in his two years with the Utah men, led them to two Western Athletic Conference championships.
Coming to Dartmouth, then, was a bit of an adjustment for Wilson. The men's swimming program has struggled in past years, and he is looking forward to helping the team improve. A dramatic change was needed in the program in order to get the team out of its rut, and, given a few years to build the team, Jim Wilson should turn out to be just what is needed.
Still, no one is expecting a quick turnaround and, thus far, there has not been one. Because Wilson only came to Dartmouth in October, he did not have a lot of time to work with the team, and was not able to recruit for this year's squad. He is happy with the progress the team has made in the past few months, but is not ashamed to call this a building year.
"It's going to take a few years to build the team," Wilson said. "It's not going to happen overnight."
In addition to its one win in the dual meet against UNH, Dartmouth also had a strong showing early in the season at the Can-Am meet in Sherbrooke, Canada. The only American team participating, Dartmouth placed third out of 13 schools in the traditionally Canadian-dominated meet.
Posting a dual meet record of 1-2, Dartmouth's losses thus far have come from Navy (171-69) and Brown (142-98). While training in Barbados over Winter break, the team had the opportunity to face Minnesota, who Wilson feels will be ranked among the top five teams in the nation, and certainly above any of the teams in the Ivy League. Losing to Minnesota 127-83, then, was neither a surprise nor a particular disappointment for Wilson or the team, and they are looking ahead to more league competition, beginning with Harvard at home this Friday.
Although one of Wilson's main goals at this point is to keep the team's spirits high, he finds it difficult to be overly optimistic about the outcome of Friday's meet.
"Harvard's tough," Wilson said. "They'll probably win the league, so for now we're just looking for some good personal performances."
Although the lack of depth on the team was a concern when Wilson first arrived, he is happy now to have a competitor in each event. He feels that with a few strong returners and some promising newcomers, they can do nothing but continue to improve.
"It's tough at this point to say how the season will progress," Wilson said, "but we have already shown a lot of improvement since October."
Wilson said returning swimmers to watch are co-captain Pete Moore '94 in the backstroke and Ben Lannon '96 in breaststroke. He said newcomer Nick Gansner '97 will be a powerful force as well.
Along with Harvard, Princeton is another perennial force in the league. Rather than aiming to beat specific teams at his point, Wilson hopes his swimmers will continue to improve and build a solid foundation for years to come.
