M. Swimming

The Harvard men's swimming team avenged last week's heart-breaking loss to Princeton by punishing Cornell at Ithaca this Saturday.

"The biggest problem with the meet was the bus ride up to Cornell," senior Bill McCloskey said.

In fact, the Crimson dominated the, meet to such an extent that none of the swimmers bothered to keep score.

"I guess no one kept score because it was so apparent we would win," Lars Reierson said.

"We beat them pretty badly," Dan Simkowitz added simply.

The swimmers turned a potentially close meet into a rout by setting the tone early. John Pearson and Tim Wood humiliated Cornell's Bob Buche, who dominated the 1650-meter freestyle last year at the Eastern Seaboards.

The Crimson never looked back from that point, drowning the Big Red en route to pool records by 200-meter freestyler John Ritch, Lars Reierson in the 400-IM. Dan Simkowitz in the 200-meter backstroke and diver Dan Watson.

This meet meant more than pool records, however, as 12 swimmers qualified for the Eastern Seaboard championships in this meet alone.

McCloskey, who won both the 100 and 200-meter butterfly, said, "It looks really positive for the Easterns because so many have qualified (for the Easterns) and there are still meets left for people to qualify."

The swimmers are especially gratified by their performance since they were coming off an emotionally draining meet against the Tigers.

"Coming back from a defeat a team is always shaky, but we swam well so it bodes well for the Easterns," Reierson said.

The team will be on the road once again, travelling this week to Pennsylvania to take on UPenn and Penn State.