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.

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.

Although he would perform better later in the season, the result would not be as sweet against the NCAA’s more difficult competition. Despite shaving eight seconds from his time, Cole took seventh at NCAAs, down five spots from his second-place finish the previous year.

Complementing the attack between the lanes, junior Enrique Roy dominated on the boards, cleaning up throughout the year and sweeping the diving events at the EISL Championship.

Normally the Crimson’s failure to win any of the high-value relay events would have sunk attempts to reclaim the league title, but Roy’s sweep on the boards negated Princeton’s advantage in that category and allowed Harvard to emerge victorious.

—Staff writer Timothy J. McGinn can be reached at mcginn@fas.harvard.edu.

By TIMOTHY J. McGINN

CRIMSON STAFF WRITER

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.

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.

Although he would perform better later in the season, the result would not be as sweet against the NCAA’s more difficult competition. Despite shaving eight seconds from his time, Cole took seventh at NCAAs, down five spots from his second-place finish the previous year.

Complementing the attack between the lanes, junior Enrique Roy dominated on the boards, cleaning up throughout the year and sweeping the diving events at the EISL Championship.

Normally the Crimson’s failure to win any of the high-value relay events would have sunk attempts to reclaim the league title, but Roy’s sweep on the boards negated Princeton’s advantage in that category and allowed Harvard to emerge victorious.

—Staff writer Timothy J. McGinn can be reached at mcginn@fas.harvard.edu.

MEN’S SWIMMING

& DIVING

RESULTS 8-1 in duels, 7th at Texas Invitational, 1st at EISLs, 31st at NCAAs

COACH Timothy D. Murphy

CAPTAINS Dan Shevchik and Cory Walker

HIGHLIGHTS Harvard retakes the EISL crown with a victory over defending champions Princeton. John Cole and Dan Shevchik win three events apiece to lead the way. Cole takes seventh at NCAAs after a second-place finish at the Texas Invitational.