After breaking a slew of records at the NESCAC Championships, the men's swimming and diving team will be looking for an encore performance over spring break when seven Jumbos travel to Minneapolis for the NCAA Championships.
The Jumbos will send six swimmers and one diver to the Land of 10,000 Lakes for the meet, which will kick off next Thursday. The number is the highest the team has sent since the 2005-06 season, when the team pulled out a 10th-place finish at the event. In each of the last two seasons, the Jumbos have sent just one individual to the meet, which features the top-qualifying swimmers in Div. III.
"We are bringing seven competitors, which is [tied for] the largest group we have had at the meet since I've been here," said coach Adam Hoyt, who has been at the helm for Tufts for the last five years. "It is a really large number for us, and even if you were to look at the other teams that have people invited, there are maybe only 10 or 15 other teams that have as many swimmers. So we are going to be in a good position to compete in a number of events."
Coming off a pair of top-15 showings in last year's competition, junior diver Rob Matera will be back at Nationals this year, again competing in both the 1- and 3-meter events. Matera will enter Thursday off two second-place finishes at NESCACs, including a team-record mark in the 1-meter dive.
While he was Tufts' lone representative at Nationals last year, Matera will be joined by a group of swimmers this time around. Two of the six others qualified individually, including the only other Jumbo with NCAA experience: senior quad-captain Andrew Shields.
"This year, I think from the beginning, right when we started, everyone had been working harder," senior quad-captain James Longhurst said. "We had weekly spinning, we did a lot more lifting and we did some yoga as a team. We all wanted to do really well this year, and one of our team goals was to send more guys to Nationals than just [Matera]."
Freshman Owen Rood, the other individual qualifier for Tufts, will be the 18th seed in the 50-yard freestyle thanks to his school-record time of 20.56 seconds at the conference meet, while Shields is right behind him as the 19th seed. Both swimmers will also be racing in the 100-yard freestyle, in which Shields holds the Tufts record. Although neither made it above the cut line in that event, their inclusion in the other races lets both take part in any event in which they swam a B-cut time.
Shields is the only Jumbo besides Matera to make the cut in a second event. The senior is seeded 18th in the 100-yard butterfly after breaking a 27-year-old Tufts record with his 49.90-second mark at NESCACs and will be arguably the busiest of the Jumbos, swimming in three individual events as well as relays.
The Jumbos will be well-represented in those relays and could make some noise in a few of the five in which they will participate. The quartet in the 200-yard medley relay, which includes Shields, Rood, Longhurst and freshman E.J. Testa, will be seeded fifth, the highest seed for Tufts in any event. That group delivered arguably the best performance of the NESCACs, coming in with an A-cut time of 1:31:04 to automatically qualify for Nationals and set a new conference and school mark.
"Certainly our relays are going to be competitive," Hoyt said. "So if we can do as well as we did at the NESCAC Championships, I think the guys realize that we can be in the top 20 in the country, which would be really exciting."
The Jumbos are also seeded 10th in the 200-yard freestyle relay, which should be another prime opportunity to post a strong finish. The members of the relay teams that hit B-cut times throughout the year but fell below the mark to qualify outright for the event will still get a chance to swim.
That means that Longhurst, Testa and junior Patrick Kinsella, the latter of whom qualified via the 200-yard freestyle relay, will all get the chance to swim one individual event. Kinsella will be joining Shields in the 100-yard butterfly, while Testa will be a part of the 100 backstroke. Longhurst will try to improve on a school-record performance of his own in the 100-yard breaststroke.
"It is just gravy on the season," Longhurst said. "We put in all the hard work and performed better than we thought we would at NESCACs, so now it is just an added bonus to go to Nationals. We aren't expecting anything from ourselves; we know we are going to swim fast, but we are just proud to be able to go and represent our team."
