Skip to Content, Navigation, or Footer.
Logo of The Middlebury Campus
Friday, Mar 29, 2024

Men's Swimming & Diving Unable to Capitalize on Home Meet Advantage

Middlebury Swimming and Diving hosted the NESCAC Men’s Championship meet last week, Friday-Sunday, Feb. 20-22 at the Middlebury College Natatorium. After a jam-packed weekend of competition, some of the fastest swimmers in the conference had broken pool records in 19 out of the meet’s 24 events (most set the last time Middlebury hosted the NESCAC championship in 2008) and shattered four NESCAC conference records.


Williams, the seventh-ranked team in the nation, clinched first place for the 13th year in a row and 14th time in NESCAC history with a score of 2,066.5 points, while Amherst (ranked 16th nationally) and Connecticut College (ranked 21st nationally) took second and third with 1,579 and 1,323 points respectively. The Panthers were able to secure a seventh-place finish with 688 points, outscoring four of the other participating teams.


To start off the meet, Paul Lagasse ’16, Stephan Koenigsberger ’16, Noel Antonisse ’17 and Bryan Cheuk ’16 took 1:24.54 to finish the 200 freestyle relay, touching the wall eighth in the final of the event.


Later that night, Koenigsberger broke his own school record in the final of the 50 breaststroke (25.80), tying for fourth place with Connecticut College’s Kirk Czelewicz. The quartet of Alex Smith ’18, Koenigsberger, co-Captain Teddy Kuo ’15 and Lagasse also finished seventh in the 400 medley relay (3:26.84).


Middlebury faced a disappointing start heading into day two when the team of Justin Cho ’17, Koenigsberger, Cheuk and Antonisse got disqualified from the 200 medley relay because of a false start.


However, Mike McGean ’17 and Koenigsberger helped redeem the Panthers by setting school records in the 1,000 freestyle and 100 breaststroke, respectively.


McGean placed fourth in the event final of 1,000 with a time of 9:32.87, breaking the previous record set in 2008 by more than two seconds.


Koenigsberger swam a NCAA ‘B’ cut time and broke his own school record in the preliminary round of the 100 breaststroke, where he went on to secure third place in the event finals.


To finish off the night, Lagasse, Smith, Connor McCormick ’18 and McGean swam to a ninth-place finish in a time of 6:59.92 in the 800 freestyle relay.


On the third and final day of the meet, Koenigsberger improved his own school record in the 200 breaststroke with a runner-up finish and NCAA ‘B’ cut time of 2:02.43, 1.66 seconds faster than the time he recorded at the NESCAC meet last year at Bowdoin.


McGean also continued to perform well, placing third in the 1650 freestyle with another NCAA ‘B’ cut time of 16:04.58.


Meanwhile, in the deep end of the pool, Dylan Peters ’16 held his own throughout the weekend with sixth-place finishes in both the one-meter and three-meter diving competitions.


Though the Panthers faced a shortage of top-three finishes, many swimmers placed within the upper half of the competition. In the 50 freestyle for instance — an event where all top-24 swimmers finished within a margin of 1.24 seconds — Lagasse earned 14th place in the B final (21.63) and Brian Cheuk ’16 won 19th in the C final (21.47).


Kuo placed 17th in the C final of the 50 fly, while his co-Captain Lucas Avidan ’15 placed 15th in the B final of the 500 freestyle (4:42.58). Ethan Sivulich ’16 touched the wall in 26.87 seconds to get 19th place in the 50 breaststroke, and Antonisse placed 14th in the 50 backstroke (24.70).


“This year the whole month of January was just incredible [because we were able] to do much more speed [and] pace work,” said Head Coach Bob Rueppel, who is proud of the men’s team’s progression this season. 


“The seniors were freshmen when I came in,” Rueppel said, “so I didn’t recruit them but they were the types of kids I would’ve recruited. We connected from the beginning, and … I feel like we had four classes that completely bought into our training program.”


The end of this meet marks the official end of the 2014-2015 Swimming and Diving season. However, the Panther swimmers whose NCAA ‘B’ cut times allow them to compete in the NCAA Division III Swimming & Diving National Championships will travel to Woodlands, Texas to swim on March 18-21.


Comments