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The Tufts Daily
Where you read it first | Friday, March 29, 2024

Tufts swimmers and divers wrap up another strong season

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The Jumbos showed another year of impressive consistency in the pool and off the boards.

The men's swimming and diving team's 2014-2015 season finally came to a close after junior tri-captain Michael Winget and sophomore diver Matt Rohrer led the Jumbos to 23rd place at this month’s NCAA Championships. This season was the second in a row -- and the fifth in the last six years -- that ended with a top-25 finish at NCAAs for coach Adam Hoyt’s team, and it was the third straight that ended in a fourth place finish at NESCACs.

“I think we performed very well as a team this year,” Winget said. “We broke a lot of school records this year, and we performed well at NESCACs and NCAAs, and I think that reflects all of the hard work we put in as a team.”

Overall, this season went remarkably similarly to the last few seasons for the Jumbos. The team finished the regular dual-meet season with a 3-3 record, beating Middlebury, Wesleyan and Wheaton, while dropping meets to Keene State, MIT and Boston College, the stronger of the two trios.

Early in the season, familiar names were at the helm, spearheading Tufts' successes. Winget, Rohrer and sophomore William Metcalfe -- all of whom competed at the 2014 NCAA Championships -- turned in strong early-season performances, as did other upperclassmen like junior tri-captain Cam Simko and classmates Harry Wood and Anthony DeBenedetto, as well as sophomore Jasper Du.

At the MIT Invitational held in December (a separate event from the dual meet in which Tufts lost to MIT), which has historically been a reliable bellwether of how Tufts will stack up against other NESCAC and non-NESCAC teams throughout the season, Tufts placed third out of six. This result was very similar to those in past seasons, and this year’s meet proved a chance to showcase the talent of Tufts’ strong first-year class.

At MIT, it was the rookies who stole the show for the Jumbos. Led by Morgan Ciliv’s fourth-place finishes in the breaststroke events, first-years Lorenzo Lau, Zachary Wallace, Neil Spazzarini, Panos Skoufalos, James McElduff and Scott Simpson played important roles in relays and scored a significant portion of the team’s points. It was not smooth sailing from the outset, however; Ciliv in particular noted, and felt acutely, the discomfort of transitioning to collegiate swimming.  

“At the beginning of the season the entire team clicked, not only with each other but [with] the program,” Ciliv said. “However, college life in general, with more to manage independently and a change of swimming procedures, challenged us. At the beginning of the season, the training was new and novel to us, which put us into higher gear with greater awareness as a swimmer ... at times the season was quite hectic, like when we had three meets in four days ... as we become more mature and adaptable, this process will only get easier.”

The team went on to finish fourth at the NESCAC Championships, held this year at Middlebury College from Feb. 20-22, for the third year in a row. Once again, it finished behind perennial champion Williams, second-place Amherst and third-place Conn. College, with whom Tufts has battled for third place for several years now.

NESCACs saw the Jumbos break six school records and record 13 NCAA B-cut times, but the conference championships were once again highlighted by the Jumbo divers’ accomplishments.

Rohrer won the one-meter diving event and finished second in the three-meter, marking the sixth year in a row that Tufts has won a conference diving title at NESCACs. Rohrer’s performance earned him the NESCAC Diver of the Meet award, and diving coach Brad Snodgrass earned the Diving Coach of the Year award for the fifth straight year and seventh time overall in his illustrious career.

“I am so proud of the divers' performance this year,” Rohrer said. “We more than exceeded my expectations, especially as such a young team, and I cannot wait to see how we perform next year.”

Winget led the Jumbos between the lanes, taking third in both the 50- and 100-meter backstrokes, and fourth in the 200-meter backstroke. He finished the meet with three school records and two NCAA B cut times.

Tufts’ relay teams also brought home big points for the team, with the 400 medley relay team of Winget, Ciliv, Metcalfe and Simko finishing fifth en route to a new school record and NCAA B time.

“The team's goals were simply to do better than we did last year,” Simko said. “I think we met that goal, which is seen by the fact that so many guys broke records and made NCAA B cuts at NESCACs.”

Despite the number of strong performances at NESCACs, only two Jumbos -- Winget and Rohrer -- qualified for the national championships. At the championships, held March 18-21, the NCAA veterans each displayed multiple strong performances.

Winget finished fifth in the 200-meter backstroke and 14th in the 100-meter backstroke to earn an All-American award and an honorable mention All-American award respectively, as well as 17 team points. Rohrer took sixth in the three-meter and eighth in the one-meter to earn a pair of All-American awards and 24 team points.

The 41 total points and 23rd place finish did not quite match last year’s finish of 50 and 19th, respectively, but last year also saw four Jumbos qualify for NCAAs instead of two.

Moreover, this year’s team featured a much younger roster, composed of 18 first-years, 18 sophomores, five juniors and just three seniors. This will mean that the vast majority of this year’s team, including all of its divers, will be returning next year, a hugely positive sign for the Jumbos moving forward.

The first-year class certainly impressed and assumed a major role this season, and it will likely only improve with more experience.

“The freshmen bring life to the team,” Simko said. “They make everything more fun and push the older guys to train hard year after year. At the end of the season they are wild cards because they've never had a collegiate season, but I'm proud of how they finished the year.”

Next season will also likely see a higher team finish at NCAAs, with two-time NCAA veterans Winget and Rohrer poised to improve and finish higher in backstroke and diving events, respectively.

“You can never tell what it will take to be top three at NCAAs,” Winget said. “Other swimmers improve, and new swimmers come into Div. III that could make a big impact. I don’t have any goals for the next season except to swim faster than this season, and I believe if I do that, I can be competitive within the top five swimmers in the country.”

Next year Rohrer will attempt to balance his commitment to the team with his extra-athletic pursuits.

“I'm going to be abroad in Sorrento, Italy in the fall so I don't really know how that's going to affect next year's performance,” Rohrer said. “Judging by how quickly I jumped back into it this year when [the] season started, I'm not super worried about being unprepared for NESCACs and NCAAs, but I think that gives other divers a chance to maybe get ahead of me. I'm going to come back and go straight to training ... with doubles almost every day, so it's going to be a full-immersion back into diving, and I'm really excited to see how that works out. I think I do have a chance to win both boards at NESCACs and maybe even top three at NCAAs, but it's a tough call to make right now.”

According to Winget and Simko, the incoming first-year class will bring another strong group of swimmers to the team, and Rohrer believes that next year’s divers will be even stronger with the addition of a few highly accomplished recruits.

“We're going to continue to tweak our training so that we can get back up there with Williams, Amherst and Conn.,” Simko said. “This means that we’re going to specialize more in the future and do the training that will specifically benefit the events we're swimming at the end of the year.”

With this year now in their rearview mirrors, the Jumbos are ready to focus their efforts on what looks to be an even stronger season in 2015-2016.