For the second year in a row, the Harvard men’s swimming and diving team finished second in the ECAC championships, coming in behind Navy by a 143-point margin.

“Navy’s got an awesome program, and they do a great job with their guys,” said Harvard assistant coach Kevin Tyrrell. “Those are the guys that we really have to watch out for, and those are the guys that we want to beat.”

A win would have been the third in the last four years in the championship, though Harvard went into the tournament with a disadvantage, bringing only 13 swimmers and a diver in a tournament that allows 18 total competitors.

Still, the Crimson finished 399.5 points ahead of Columbia, the eighth-place finishers and the closest Ivy League foe in the tournament. The Ivy League Championships take place next weekend at Princeton.

Harvard won three events during the three-day tournament—two relays and one individual race. Junior Evan Schindewolf won the 400-yard individual medley, swimming the event in 4:00.91, .43 seconds ahead of Navy freshman Benjamin Bondurant.

The Crimson also won the 800-yard freestyle relay, a combined effort from senior Rick McKellar, sophomore David Lynch, and freshmen Ryan Cutter and Brendan McIntee. Navy again finished second in the event, losing by a tenth of a second.

Cutter had the fastest split on the relay team, finishing his leg in 1:38.85. Tyrrell pointed out that he had never had a split faster than 1:41.

Harvard’s final victory was the 400-yard freestyle relay, the last event of the tournament, once again beating out Navy by a .71-second margin. McKeller had the second-fastest split in the race.

Tyrrell also emphasized McKeller’s role, along with that of senior Rob Lynch, in the team’s second-place effort.

“Rick McKeller and Rob Lynch...[have] done a nice job leading the program,” he said.

“Rob and Rick did a great job of making sure that the team was ready to swim this weekend,” Cutter added. “They set the bar pretty high, and they both did pretty great this weekend.”

Throughout the weekend, Harvard’s strongest finishes were in relays. Beyond the two relay victories, the team finished in second in the 200-yard medley relay and the 200-yard freestyle relay, falling to the University of Pittsburgh in both races.

“Before each race we said, ‘This is it, we’ve got to leave it all in the pool.’ We really just swam our hearts out,” Cutter said.

Still, neither race was particularly close—the Crimson finished .88 seconds behind in the 200 freestyle relay and nearly three seconds back of Pitt in the 200 medley relay.

In the 200 freestyle relay, McKeller, as the anchor, had the fastest split, swimming his leg in 20.35 seconds. He also finished third in the 100-yard butterfly and fourth in the 200-yard butterfly. Cutter and sophomore Ross Ford finished fifth and sixth, respectively, in the 200 fly.

Harvard also finished third in the 400-yard medley relay. McIntee had the fastest freestyle split in the finals of the relay, swimming his 100-yard leg in 45 seconds flat.

Though the Crimson had no individual victories other than Schindewolf’s Saturday win, it did have a number of close calls. For no one was this more true than for sophomore Nicholas DuCille.

In the 50-yard freestyle finals on Friday, DuCille lost to Navy freshman Robbie Parker by six one-hundredths of a second.

Yesterday, DuCille was again out-touched, this time by Bucknell University sophomore Eric Sokolosky in the 100-yard freestyle. DuCille finished the race in 45.60, losing by .02 seconds.

DuCille was not without his successes—he was also the freestyle anchor in the second-place 200 medley relay, where he had a 20.16-second split, the fastest in the finals. He led off in the winning effort in the 400-yard freestyle relay as well.

“[DuCille’s] continuing to work on [his] turns, trying to make those more efficient, but we’re just proud of the steps he’s taken to move forward,” Tyrell said.

Still, with the Ivy League Championships next weekend and with a relatively young team, Harvard looks at this as preparation.

“Our swims this weekend are really going to be motivational for our Ivy team, [and] hopefully they can do better than we did [in the ECAC tournament] at Ivies next weekend,” Cutter said.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

CORRECTION: March 2, 2010

An original version of the Mar. 1 sports article "Harvard Men Take Second at ECACs" incorrectly referenced "Bryant University sophomore Eric Sokolosky." In fact, Sokolosky is a swimmer for Bucknell University.