The margin was not meant to last.

The Tigers roared back to win six of eight races, erasing the considerable deficit and precariously perching themselves atop the leader board.

“After the second day of the meet there may have been a little doubt because we were behind, and we knew that we had to have a virtually perfect third day in order to win the meet,” Gentilucci said. “But we laid those doubts aside and put our faith in each other.”

Heightening the frustration was the feeling that the standings, even with Princeton’s strong performance, were not the way they should have been.

“The largest difficulty we had to overcome was Alex Siroky’s disqualification in the 400 IM on the second day,” Gentilucci said. “The disqualification took about 25 points away from us, and we knew that we needed every single point we could get if we were going to win. Everyone was very upset and angry that an official had made that call at such a critical time. We just had to put it out of our heads and focus on the task at hand.”

The pendulum and the momentum it carried would swing back one final time.

Unwilling to be vanquished on a third consecutive occasion, Harvard posted three victories and 17 top-eight finishes.

The first race of the final evening went to the Crimson, which never looked back. Harvard was master of the East once more.

“It was very gratifying, especially after losing the meet last year,” Gentilucci said. “Also, we knew that this was the toughest Princeton squad we had ever faced.”

The Crimson attack took shape in much the same way it had in each of the two previous seasons—Shevchik and junior John Cole paved the way by dominating their events with a patchwork of victories and top finishes by several of Harvard’s other swimmers supplementing the point total and sealing the victory.

In the final meet, Shevchik did what has become second nature to him—he won all his events, sharing the high-scorer title with Cole.

Over four years, Shevchik accumulated more total points than any other swimmer in the league, earning him the Ulen Award in recognition of his accomplishment.

As Shevchik did, Cole began his weekend with a record-setting effort, breaking away from the competition to win the 500-yard freestyle in 4:20.11—four seconds ahead of the pack.

On the second day, Cole approached his own 1000-yard freestyle meet record before ultimately falling three seconds short of breaking it. He still handily defeated the rest of the field by over five and a half seconds. In spite of pauses to pull his cap from his head before wiping his goggles clean, Cole also edged out the runner-up in the 1650-yard freestyle by nearly half a second.

Cole had shown flashes of that brilliance earlier in the season, when he took second in the event at the Texas Invitational. With a time of 15:02.82, Cole was bested only by USC’s Eric Vendt, an Olympic medalist, who dominated the event, winning in a time of 14:42.97.