Sports

Tough loss galvanizes swim team

In print | November 20, 2008

he Garnet swim teams were tested this past weekend in a duel with Franklin & Marshall College, the winner of the previous two Centennial Championships. Though the Swarthmore women (2-1, CC 1-1) would go on to lose 130-65 and the men (1-2, CC 1-1) by a close 108-97, the meet as a whole foretold a promising season for both teams.

“They won by fractions of a second,” Guy Seaton ’09 said. Seaton expressed a frustration unique to swimming, but also relevant to many other sports — a buzzer-beater, a shootout, a runner winning by a nose. The men’s 100-yard freestyle was such a race. In the end, F&M pulled ahead of Swarthmore’s captain Douglas Gilchrist-Scott ’09, winning by just 14 hundredths of a second.
It is tiresome to think about all the hypothetical situations that could have led the men to victory. Danny Friel ’10 comments that in the face of close losses, “We look back at the meet, and the races we did win.” For the men, Stephen Shymon ’09 dominated the rest of the field by taking the 500-yard and 1000-yard freestyle races for Swarthmore. Furthermore, the Garnet were able to take first, second and third at the 50-yard freestyle and ended the meet by taking first and second in the 400-yard freestyle relay.

The Swarthmore women were able to claim a victory in the 200-yard breaststroke (by Stephanie Su ’11) despite missing members of their team. While the F&M team has been strong in the past, this year they had an especially large team that made competition exceptionally difficult, particularly in numbers-heavy relay events.

Fortunately, the Garnet can look forward to more rounds against the Diplomats in the future, once at the Franklin & Marshall Invitational and again at the Centennial Championships. In the mean time, the teams have been practicing hard.

A typical practice involves warming up as a team and splitting into training groups for sprinters, middle-distance swimmers, and distance swimmers. The team practices every day and takes a rest (a shorter practice) only before big meets. Friel comments on the rigor of practice, “It’s hard to race when you’re so tired,” adding that the main goal is the conference meet, and no rest now means better results when the stakes are higher.

Chelsea Brett ’11 also comments that practice isn’t day-to-day tedium, that “Having really good friends [at practice] makes practices a lot more enjoyable.” Brett also acknowledges how the team has increased their dry-land training and the results look promising in the long run.
It may still be difficult for the average person to imagine how or why a Swarthmore student would dedicate, by Seaton’s measurement, three hours a day to swimming and swimming-related activities. For these athletes, swimming is a hefty time (and energy) commitment while improvement is often slow-paced and “doesn’t get any easier,” Friel said.

Brett said, “Getting better, improving my times, and competition” are all motivations for her continued involvement with swimming. Seaton echoes that swimming is “the same as any other activity — a concert pianist learning another piece or a novelist writing another chapter.” Meets only capture a small part of the exciting aspects of swimming — the sustained individual improvement and dedication.

Friel added, “College swimming is very team-oriented — you feel like you’re part of a group effort,” and that helping others achieve a common goal is partially what makes swimming so satisfying. Swimmers that you talk to will often highlight the importance of being on a team. Despite the fact that only one swimmer is in a lane at a time, the team proves to be cohesive and full of camaraderie. Friel mentions that the team will often even study together (as was the case when he was interviewed).

Next weekend, the team will travel to New York City on a trip that will be light on sight-seeing and heavy on competition. The prospect of facing a challenging team, New York University, always excites the swimmers (though the daunting bus ride may not). The swim teams face some of their toughest competition early in the season. The meets against F&M, NYU, and earlier Widener earlier prove to be no exception.

Disclosure Notice: Sports Reporter Danny Friel is a member of the swimming team but played no role in the production or editing of this article.