Sophomore RYAN SMITH, above, and the Harvard men's swimming and diving team reclaimed the Eastern title after Princeton upset the Crimson's streak of Eastern reign last year. The Tigers beat Harvard at H-Y-P earlier in the season by just five points.

For the Harvard men’s swimming team, the year between the 2002 Eastern Intercollegiate Swimming League (EISL) Championship and the 2003 meet was a period of dynastic crisis.

Princeton’s victory in the 2002 season’s final league event was the Tigers’ first since 1996, snapping a streak of six consecutive Crimson victories and putting to end an era in which Harvard emerged on top nine times out of 10.

“We had won our freshman and sophomore years, so I think I, at least, and probably others, just took it for granted that we would win every year,” senior Andrew McConnell said. “Princeton showed us it was not going to be easy last year.”

The aberration proved to be more than a small hiccup in the Crimson’s period of dominance as the situation for Harvard was no better at the 2003 H-Y-P meet.

At the beginning of the dual season, the Crimson coasted to victory after victory, casting aside competition with relative ease, bolstering its record and preparing for the late-season push.

But Harvard had faced no squad of Princeton’s caliber.

In the first test of the season for the Crimson, featuring the two preeminent eastern powers competing head-to-head, the Tigers eked out a five-point victory, winning on the final relay event and casting significant doubt on Harvard’s ability to return to the pinnacle of the EISL.

“We were definitely disappointed to have lost by such a narrow margin,” senior Mike Gentilucci said. “But the loss at H-Y-P only strengthened our conviction to come back and win conferences.”

And Princeton’s reign at the top of the marine food chain was ultimately short-lived.

“I think [H-Y-P] showed us we could beat them, but that it was never going to come to us, we had to actually be the aggressors,” McConnell said. “It made the people who may have been cocky before the meet reevaluate what they thought and made the team work even harder to get where we wanted to be come March.”

That dedication and work ethic characterized the second-half of the season from top to bottom.

“[Coach] Tim [Murphy] lives almost an hour away and instead of going home one night [after a snowstorm], he chose to sleep at the pool to guarantee we would have a coach on the pool deck in the morning,” McConnell said. “I didn’t realize what he had done when I came down the next morning and so I asked him what time he had to get up to get to the pool by 5:50 a.m. Very nonchalantly, he told me that he hadn’t gone home, [because] if he had there would have been no way he could have made it on time. It was then, looking at him and realizing he had never considered any other options, that I knew we could, and should win Easterns.”

At the 2003 EISL Championship, the Crimson drew first blood, swimming more races on day one and bursting out to a commanding early meet lead in excess of 100 points.

Capitalizing on its depth, the squad placed in the top-eight time after time.

In the 200-yard individual medley, co-captain Dan Shevchik, junior Rassan Grant and Gentilucci swept the top three spots to give Harvard an early edge.