M. Swimming Takes 22nd Place at NCAAs

For the first time in four years, the Harvard men’s team sent four swimmers to the NCAA Men’s Swimming and Diving Championships held at the University of Minnesota.

For the first time in four years, each of them came home with Honorable Mention All-America honors.

In the team’s most impressive national performance since 2001, the Crimson finished a reputable 22nd place among national swimming powerhouses that fielded entire teams for the three-day competition.

“The NCAA [meet] is the fastest meet in the world,” senior captain John Cole said, the veteran of four NCAA championships and the 2004 U.S. Olympic Trials. “People are breaking all sorts of records. There are so many Olympians there.”

Cole, senior James Lawler, junior David Cromwell, and freshman Geoff Rathgeber represented Harvard from March 24 to 26, with each competing in two individual events as well as four relays.

The Crimson’s 200-yard medley relay was disqualified in the preliminary rounds, but Harvard captured 15th-place finishes in both the 400-yard medley and 800-yard freestyle relay. Each performance earned them Honorable Mention All-America status.

In the 400-yard medley relay on March 24, Cromwell’s opening leg put the Crimson into third place in the consolation final. His 100-yard backstroke time of 0:48.19 was just 0.22 seconds behind leader and perennial title contender Georgia. Eventually, however, Harvard found it difficult to keep up with a field dominated by pure sprinters and fell slightly off the pace.

“It was difficult for us,” Cole said. “For me, for example, I’m not a sprinter and I’m not used to those distances. When you’re swimming against guys that are breaking American records, that’s difficult.”

The Crimson met similar competition in the 800-yard freestyle relay, where Florida swimmers that had established the NCAA and US Open records earlier in the year torched the field by over 1.5 seconds. The Harvard relay again came in 15th despite battling the nation’s best sprinters, including Gators freestyler Ryan Lochte—a 2004 Olympic gold medalist in the same event.

“We knew we weren’t going to be one of the top teams as far as relays go,” Rathgeber said. “I know we didn’t really know what we were going to get when we walked in there, but we made the consolation heat and held our own against the top teams in the country and got some points out of it.”

Rathgeber and company proved similarly resilient in Olympic-caliber individual competition as well. Over the weekend, 10 individual University of Minnesota pool records fell and new NCAA marks were established in the 50-yard freestyle, 100-yard freestyle, and 200-yard individual medley.

Rathgeber swam to a 26th-place finish in the 200-yard individual medley preliminaries March 24 with a time of 1:48.23.

The next day, Rathgeber equaled that performance, finishing 26th in the 400-yard IM medley despite entering competition seeded 32nd. He touched the wall in 3:54.73, well ahead of two swimmers each from national powers Texas and Florida.

“[This meet] was an eye-opener for me,” Rathgeber said. “[Coach Tim Murphy] came over and said to me, ‘It’s not really how you perform, but what you get out of this meet.’ This meet really opened me up to the possibilities of the future and how I can train for it.”

Lawler, the EISL champion in both the 100-yard and 200-yard butterfly, placed 41st in the preliminaries of the 100 fly with a time of 0:49.07. He finished off his individual career in the 200 fly March 26, coming in 29th in the preliminary round in 1:48.15.

NCAA veterans Cole and Cromwell starred for the Crimson in individual competition, each receiving Honorable Mention All-America status for their respective efforts.

Cromwell looked to improve upon last year’s championships, where he finished ninth in the 200-yard backstroke. Seeded 14th in the 100-yard backstroke, Cromwell snuck into March 25’s consolation final with a time of 0:47.98, good for 16th place in the preliminaries.

He finished 15th overall in 0:48.08.

“Dave definitely stepped it up again in this meet,” Rathgeber said. “When the competition gets greater, he brings his race to another level. He’s always really determined to get to the wall first and put on a great show.”

On March 26, Cromwell used a late surge in the last 100 yards of the consolation final to secure an 11th-place finish in the 200-yard backstroke. In seventh place after the first 100 yards—poised for 15th overall—Cromwell took the last half of the race in 0:52.67, a time faster than those of three swimmers in the championship final. His final time of 1:43.88 would have secured him seventh place had he raced in the championship final.

“Dave did a great job after coming off of a really great Easterns [EISL championships],” Cole said. “That experience will help him out next year.”

In Cole’s final collegiate meet, he secured a 10th-place finish in the 1650-yard freestyle, the fourth time he has finished in the top 10 in that event at the NCAA championships.

But because the lengthy race has no preliminary heat, Cole found himself the odd man out in the eight-person championship final, as he entered the weekend seeded ninth in a 36-person field.

The seeding forced him to swim in the afternoon’s consolation final for the first time in his career, where Cole placed second and 10th overall with a time of 15:03.10.

“The [consolation final] got off to a slower pace,” Cole said. “I didn’t take the race as I should have. You have to go into races like that with a different frame of mind and sometimes that’s more difficult than others.”

Cole, who placed second in the event in 2002 and third in 2003, still earned Honorable Mention All-America status. It marked the fourth time in as many trips to the NCAA meet that he earned All-America honors.

“I was disappointed for maybe the first few minutes [afterwards] because it was my last race,” Cole said. “But looking back on it, I was just happy to have accomplished what I’ve done throughout my whole career.”

His 1650-yard freestyle performance, coupled with Cromwell’s finish in the 200-yard backstroke, moved Harvard up to 22nd from 25th place on the last day of competition.

“This meet was icing on the cake for me,” Cole said. “I wanted to enjoy what I’ve done for Harvard and in swimming and enjoy one last time what it’s like to be in the presence of such elite athletes.”

—Staff writer Aidan E. Tait can be reached at atait@fas.harvard.edu.