Austin Dike | Phoenix Staff

Santiago Lombo reached the A-final in three events at the Centennial Conference Championships - the 100-yard butterfly, the 100-yard backstroke, and the 200-yard backstroke.

BY MADDIE WILLIAMS

In print | Published February 26, 2009 — Updated February 28, 2009 21:53

For months, the Swarthmore men’s and women’s swim teams have spent countless hours in and out of the pool, training together, travelling together, toiling together and laughing together. They even journeyed to Aruba for a grueling but satisfying training trip this winter break. This weekend, all their hard work came to a head at the Centennial Conference Championships.

Evidently, all that work paid off.“Conferences could hardly have gone any better. Everybody showed a lot of heart and came through with outstanding times,” Sarah Bedolfe ’11 said.

The Centennial Conference Championships were held this past weekend at the Kunkel Aquatic Center and hosted by Franklin and Marshall College. This three-day event, which took place Feb. 20-22, marked the culmination of these swimmers’ seasons. “They were the most exciting three days of my swimming career,” Travis Pollen ’12 said.

On Friday night, the men’s team kicked off Conferences with several strong individual showings. Doug Gilchrist-Scott ’09 set his first college record this weekend in the 50-yard freestyle, breaking his own Swarthmore record (21.48, set leading off the 200 freestyle relay earlier in the session) with a time of 21.39 on the way to a third place finish. Stephen Shymon ’09 brought home a gold medal for Swarthmore in the 500-yard freestyle with a time of 4:41.03, almost five seconds ahead of the nearest competitor. Shymon also reset his college record in the event, eclipsing his previous standard of 4:42.80 from 2006.

The 400-yard medley relay team of Santiago Lombo ’11, Sterling Satterfield ’11, Sam Bullard-Sisken ’12 and Gilchrist-Scott received a silver medal with a time of 3:32.02, which is also a new college standard. The squad of Gilchrist-Scott, Tim Brevart ’12, Lance Liu ’12 and Michael Ahn ’10 finished third in the men’s 200-yard freestyle with a time of 1:26.08.

Day two of the Conference Championships saw more impressive swims from the Swarthmore squad. In a close victory over Gettysburg (1:36.95), the men’s 200-yard medley relay of Gilchrist-Scott, Satterfield, Bullard-Sisken and Brevart clocked in at 1:36.30.

On the women’s side, Chelsea Brett ’11 picked up a silver medal in the 200-yard freestyle, finishing with a time of 1:56.34. All-American Anne Miller ’10 also secured a silver medal in the 100-yard butterfly with a time of 57.95. Though shy to comment on her own success, Miller was quick to praise the team. “Everyone on the team walked away from this weekend with at least one race they could be really happy about,” she said.

Numerous other swimmers, even those who did not advance past the preliminary heats, also achieved great personal success this weekend. Many of these athletes, including Pollen, set new lifetime best records in their respective events. “It was just really satisfying to see all the hard work from the season pay off,” Pollen said. “Everyone on the team was going faster than they ever had before.”

Yet while the overall team performance was certainly of note this weekend, several individual standouts also emerged. Gilchrist-Scott reset his own school records a total of five times in addition to setting an all-time Centennial Conference record in the preliminary session of the 100-yard freestyle with a time of 46.48. Miller secured an NCAA provisional qualifying standard, known as a B-cut, in the 200-yard butterfly with a time of 2:08.47. Satterfield’s silver-medal winning time of 2:07.46 in the 200-yard breaststroke garnered him a B-cut, while Lance Liu ’12 clocked a B-cut in the shorter breaststroke, also winning silver, in 58.30. Essentially, a B-cut places a swimmer into a consideration pool for the national meet, but this depends on how other athletes across the country perform.

On the final day of the championship, Shymon swam away from the conference field for a second time, winning the 1650-yard freestyle in 16:31.72.

Not to be outdone, the women’s team boasted an individual gold on day three from Stephanie Su ’11, who won the women’s 200-yard breaststroke with a time of 2:30.29. The margin of victory was the closest of the championships; Su cleared second-place Franklin & Marshall freshman Samantha Sweeney by just 0.03.

2009 marks the second consecutive year that Franklin and Marshall has edged out the Swarthmore men’s team for the number one spot in the conference, a pattern that the Garnet hopes to reverse in 2010. “The season had its ups and downs, but the team really pulled together. We came out stronger and ended up [with] a fantastic overall season,” Bedolfe said. A fellow swimmer echoed her sentiment. “We may not have the best record in the conference … but I think that we had more fun together than any other team possibly could have,” Miller said.

In terms of next season, the teams are optimistic. In particular, the men next year just “really want to beat Franklin and Marshall,” Pollen said.

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