When a title is on the line, the performances from the regular season fade into the shadows. Though the hours of training are crucial, in swimming, it all comes down to the final days of competition to determine a champion.

For the Harvard men’s swimming and diving team (9-0, 7-0 Ivy), regular season successes weren’t enough for the group to claim the Ivy title for the second year in a row. The men finished second behind host Princeton, finishing with 1285.5 points, while the Tigers claimed the title with a total of 1519 points.
“Princeton swam lights out, so you’ve got to hand it to them,” co-captain Michael Gaudiani said. “They had an incredible meet.”

The Tigers left a wake in their path that no team could overcome, as they dominated all three days of competition in their home pool. They took an early lead on day one that created an uphill battle for the remaining seven teams throughout the subsequent two days of competition.

“I thought we performed well as a team,” co-captain Griffin Schumacher said. “Obviously we weren’t completely satisfied with the outcome, but sometimes some of the most difficult meets are where you learn the most.”

Coming into the weekend with an undefeated regular season record, the Crimson had high expectations for this meet. The team was coming off a close HYP sweep, where they defeated now-champion Princeton by a narrow margin of only 27 points. Harvard had nearly a month off from competition between the meets, but did not let its training slow down.

“We were just simulating races every day in practice so we would have mock meets and different sets that were designed to emulate the competition environment,” Schumacher said.

The Crimson’s top performer of the meet was senior diver Mike Mosca. Mosca was the one competitor that no other team could touch, as he swept both the one-meter and three-meter events. He became the third ever Ivy competitor to sweep both the one-meter and three-meter at an Ivy Championship.

With his one-meter victory, the Tenafly, N.J. native became the first Ivy League diver to ever win the one-meter Ivy title all four years of competition. He claimed the title this year with a score of 368.05, just one point shy of the meet record, of which he already holds. On day three when Mosca competed in the three-meter event, he finished with a score of 457.35, a new meet record. Though they may not have been first to touch the wall in their events, many other Crimson swimmers contributed strong individual performances to keep Harvard in second position.

Sophomore Jack Manchester continued his whirlwind season, as he set a trio of records with his preliminary swim in the 200 backstroke. His time of 1:41.44 was enough to write his name atop the Ivy League, meet, and pool record books. He fell, however, in the final race when Yale swimmer Rob Harder beat him to the finish by less than a half of a second.

On day two of the contest, sophomore Max Yakubovich was the top Crimson finisher, as he took second in the 100 fly with a time of 46.88.

Though Princeton swept each of the relay events, Harvard’s 200 free relay combination of sophomore Paul O’Hara, freshman Steven Tan, Yakubovich, and Schumacher were a bright point for the relays as they finished second with a time of 1:18.76. Though the foursome finished faster than expected based on their seed time, they faced off against a Princeton group that set a new meet record with a time of 1:17.35.

The Crimson will graduate 13 seniors from the current roster, but showed the depth of their team this year in the championship meet.

“I definitely could be happier if we won,” Gaudiani said. “That’s a goal for next year and we would definitely like to train even harder and use this as motivation for next year’s training group. We have a young team right now and we had some great culture this year. Keep that up and it should go our way.”

—Staff writer Theresa C. Hebert can be reached at thebert@college.harvard.edu.