The men's swimming and diving team finished off their season this past week at the EISL Championships in West Point, N.Y. at the U.S. Military Academy. Led by junior Nathan Fidel's three top ten individual event finishes, the team amassed 292 points over three days of competition to finish tenth.
Fidel's best performance came in the 100-yard butterfly finals, where he swam 50.10 to secure a seventh place finish for the Big Green. He added two tenth place showings in the 50 and 100 freestyles (20.86 and 45.73, respectively).
Fidel was happy with his times, which were barely off school records.
"Individually I was pleased with how I swam," said Fidel. "In the 50 free leadoff of the 200 free relay I went a 20.58 which is .09 off the senior national qualification time. As for my swims in the 100 fly and 100 free, I was .14 and .13 respectively off the school records."
Thomas Sanford '04 contributed a thirteenth-place finish in the 100 breaststroke with a time of 58.03.
Fidel and Sanford teamed up with Matt Sueoka '04 and Ben Wade '04 to finish eighth in the 800 free relay at 6:56.92.
"Although I wasn't where I wanted to be in most of my races, I felt pretty strong in the 100 breaststroke. I hope to improve my placing next year," said Sanford.
Harvard took the team title for the sixth straight year, amassing 1,052 points to best second and third place finishers Princeton and Yale.
Host Army finished in seventh. Marc Spitz's twenty-nine-year-old pool record in the 200 butterfly was toppled by Princeton's Carl Hessler, who posted a 1:45.60.
"It was great to see so many guys on our team make such tremendous drops in time," said Sanford. There were a lot of lifetime best times. With a good '05 recruiting class, we hope to continue to improve our overall finish."
