Like the World Championships or the U.S. Olympic Trials, the NCAA championship is regarded as one of the fastest swim meets in the world. This year was no exception.

Olympians such as Southern California sophomore Erik Vendt competed March 22-24 to break 18 pool records and four American records at Texas A&M. The University of Texas won its second-straight NCAA title with 597.5 points, 140 points ahead of No. 2 Stanford.

The Harvard men's swim team (8-1. 6-1 Ivy) ended its stellar season with a 22nd -place finish at NCAAs to follow its sixth-straight conference win four weeks ago.

The Crimson had been ranked 19th going into the meet, and while individual times fell a bit short of what the swimmers had accomplished at December's Texas Invite, the team turned in impressive relay splits and remains positive about its NCAA performance.

Six of the Crimson's 30 team members participated in the meet.

True to his Ivy League swims, freshman John Cole's distance freestyle swims proved nothing less than awesome.

Cole placed fifth in the1,650-yard free, less than four seconds behind third-place Vendt. The swim places him as the fastest miler in Harvard history, if not the Eastern Conference, and was a new Harvard record (replacing that of Tim Martin '00 set in 1999).

Cole also placed 12th in the 500 freestyle, touching out Penn State junior Martin Schierhorn with a time of 4:19.56. The performance was also a personal-best for Cole and placed him just two-tenths of a second away from the school record. It was the first time since the Texas Invite that Cole had gotten proper rest.