Men’s Swim and Dive Crushes Brown in First Home Meet

Harvard men’s swim and dive (5-0, 4-0 Ivy) rolled out the welcome mat at Blodgett Pool for the first time this season, hosting Brown University (2-4, 1-4 Ivy) in an Ivy League meet on Saturday.

The matchup ended the same way it has for over three decades: in favor of Harvard.

The Crimson ushered its conference rivals out the door with a resounding 223-77 victory, marking Harvard’s 31st consecutive win against the Bears.

A relay victory both kicked off and closed the Crimson’s meet, as Harvard went on to secure two of the top-three spots in all events and finish first in all but two — the three and one-meter dives.

“The meet today was solid. We had a lot of guys that have some type of stomach ailment, which is going on, so they performed, even though they weren’t feeling their best, which is good,” Harvard’s Head Coach Kevin Tyrrell said. “That should be a good component for us when we start to feel better, still swimming tough, even though we had some adversity.”

Freshmen William Mulgrew and Pablo Martinez, both of whom scored NCAA qualifying times in the 1650-yard freestyle in early December, started Harvard’s individual events off with a strong first and second-place finish in the 1000-yard freestyle, respectively. Notably, junior Tristan Dalbey returned to finish fourth in his first race of the season.

“One of his [Mulgrew’s] focuses for the first half of the year was him working on his turns, because he gets 39 turns in the 1000 freestyle, and he looked much more powerful coming off the wall than he had up till this point,” Tyrrell said.

In the 200-yard free, senior Anders Aistars recorded his season best time as he edged Brown’s Christopher Zhang by less than a tenth of a second.

The Crimson maintained its legacy of backstroke dominance by sweeping the 100-yard series, followed by sophomore Joshua Chen surpassing Harvard’s season best time in the 100-yard breaststroke by two-tenths of a second.

Junior Sonny Wang and senior captain David Schmitt, both with appearances in last year’s NCAA Championships, finished first in their respective events, the 100-yard freestyle and

200-yard butterfly. Schmitt previously recorded an NCAA qualifying time at the Minnesota Invitational, the Crimson’s last meet before the winter break.

“Always proud of everybody on my team, but David Schmidt was very sick, and he still won the 200 fly,” Tyrrel said. “Eric Lee swam very, very tough, but he was not feeling great as well today.”

In the 200-yard backstroke, sophomore Adriano Arioti chopped nearly two-tenths off his season-best, and Harvard continued its momentum by securing the top three positions in the 500-yard free and 100-yard butterfly.

Brown’s Rowland Lawver — last year’s Ivy League one-meter champion — won both diving events, though a sign of success came from Harvard’s freshman Chase Shipp, who beat his season high score in the one-meter dive by ten points to finish in second place.

Harvard closed the individual events with a dominant performance by Arioti in the 200-yard individual medley, who left a four-second gap ahead of the second-place finisher.

Harvard remains at Blodgett to finish its season, starting with a combined meet next Saturday against the University of Pennsylvania and Boston College.

Afterward, the Crimson will host the annual Harvard-Yale-Princeton meet before heading to the Ivy League Championships in Princeton, N.J. Harvard will seek to reclaim its conference title, having previously won seven straight championships until the Crimson snapped its streak last year by finishing in second place.

“In the first half of the year, we work a lot on aerobic work, and in the second half of the year, we work more on speed,” Tyrrel said. “It’ll be a lot of fun to swim the next couple of meets, just because we can start to go faster, because it’s based on our training a little bit more, and the season only gets tougher in terms of competition, especially with Harvard-Yale-Princeton.”

“If we’re swimming lifetime best and doing lifetime diving best scores, then that’s pretty much all we can control,” he added. “We’re very much focused on ourselves.”

—Staff writer Uy B. Pham can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on X @uybpham.