Nine men's swimmers and one diver capped off a grueling season with an impressive result at the Div. III National Championships, held this year at Minnesota University's Aquatic Center from March 17-20.
All 10 Jumbo performers went home as either All-Americans or honorable mention All-Americans, and the team overall finished in 18th place — the second-highest finish in coach Adam Hoyt's six-year tenure.
The top Tufts performance came in the 200-yard medley relay, where a team of senior Patrick Kinsella, juniors Michael Del Moro and Zed Debbaut and sophomore Owen Rood reached All-American status by finishing in seventh place in the prelims with a time of 1:31.89 — approximately a half-second faster than the time posted three weeks earlier at the NESCAC Championships — and subsequently a 1:32.29 finish in the final that was good enough for eighth place.
"We went consistently with our times at NESCACs … though in the morning we swam a bit faster," Kinsella said. "At night we went slower, but in these kinds of races it's a difference of a touch, or an exchange, that makes all of the difference."
Three other Tufts relays finished in honorable mention All-American position at NCAAs, including the 200-yard freestyle relay team of Rood, Kinsella, junior Gordy Jenkins and sophomore E.J. Testa that was only one tenth of a second away from qualifying for the finals and ultimately finished in 11th place with a time of 1:23.68.
"That was a little of a rough swim for some people, and as a whole we weren't on the mark that we wanted to be, so we missed the final heat by a tenth of a second," Jenkins said. "But we knew that it was going to be a shootout, and while we wanted to be third or fourth, 11th place isn't bad."
The other two Tufts relay teams to earn honorable mentions were the 400-yard medley relay team of Kinsella, Del Moro, who is also a news editor for the Daily, Debbaut and Rood, and the 800-yard freestyle relay unit of Kinsella, Testa, and juniors Andrew Altman and David Meyer.
The sole male diver at the Championships, senior quad-captain Rob Matera, ended his Tufts career with an honorable-mention performance in the 3-meter diving event, scoring 361.65 in the consolation final to finish 16th overall.
The nine Tufts swimmers who went to Nationals composed one of the bigger teams to head to NCAAs in recent memory, according to Kinsella and Hoyt, and the top-20 finish is encouraging for a program that hopes to continue to improve.
"Coach told us that we were the second-largest squad we have ever sent to Nationals," Kinsella said. "And people thought we would do well, but finishing 18th is very impressive."
The top-20 performance from Tufts was especially remarkable given that the team had to quickly recover from the huge NESCAC Championship meet only three weeks earlier. For those who had trained all season for the NESCAC meet, they were forced to endure yet another mentally and physically exhausting championship grind.
"Really, it's a mental game," Kinsella said. "We had already tapered once, and a lot of guys came and brought their A-game, and I'm so proud that everyone became an All-American."
While this year's NCAA Championships was Kinsella's final meet at Tufts, the other eight Jumbo swimmers on the team will return next season with hopes of finishing even higher at the 2011 meet.
"It's going to be hard having Patrick graduate, and it's been great swimming with him," Jenkins said. "But I think he knows that we have a lot left in us, and I think that we're just going to get better and have even more people qualify next year."
Tufts' showing on the national stage is an improvement on the team's 35th-place finish at Nationals last year and suggests that Hoyt is taking the team in the right direction, and, only in his sixth year, is rapidly adding to the legacy of former coach Don Megerle.
"Coach Hoyt has had a substantial impact on this program, and the fact is that he had the second-best performance in his time at Tufts with only graduating two seniors," Kinsella said.
"The important thing is that [Hoyt] is building [the] program of Megerle and creating his own legacy, and that important part is that that legacy is here to stay." Kinsella added. "And I'm excited to see what next year's legacy is going to be."
