Men’s and women’s aquatics hosts Columbia this weekend at Teagle pool. Both teams are coming off solid performances against Colgate this past weekend. The men’s team trounced Colgate 179-102, winning their second meet in a row. The women’s team lost in a close battle, 129-169. The women were able to win six events against New York rival Colgate, but it wasn’t quite enough for the victory.
“Colgate was definitely a good meet, it was the type of meet that we could play up our lineup a bit,” senior captain Wes Newman said.
[img_assist|nid=34274|title=Phelps in the making?|desc=Men’s swimming will take on Columbia on Saturday. Competition is fierce on the men’s side, with senior captain Wes Newman and freshman Michael Cai looking for event wins.|link=node|align=left|width=|height=0]
The Men’s team has been steadily decreasing their times in nearly every event in the past few weekends. In their dual meet at Teagle against Navy and Yale the Red was able to break 11 pool records.
The all-star 200 meter medley relay team comprised of freshman up-and-comer Michael Cai, senior captain Wes Newman, senior backstroker Phil Baity, and junior freestyler Sasha Dobrolioubov beat the Bulldogs by about a half second. These four have been producing weekend to weekend and are definitely the ones to watch going into the final meets of the season.
“Historically it’s always been a really close meet against Columbia, so we are looking to take our best swimmers and perform,” Newman said.
Columbia is right behind the Red in the Ivy League rankings, having a similar record in both in league and exhibition play. By their records so far, this meet should be truly competitive. Just like the Red, the Lions have a two meet streak on the line and have shown they can defend it. Though they lost to Yale earlier in the season, the Lions seem to be in good form for their visit upstate.
“Its always a positive experience to compete against fast swimmers, it forces us to hang with them, and you never quite know what can happen,” senior Mary Cirrella said.
The Red women have not performed nearly as well as the men by their current meet record. But they have been improving meet to meet, picking up more top-5 finishes and competing with some of the top swimmers in the league.
The Columbia women’s aquatic team is undefeated so far this season, and is tied for second. They have consistently gotten top-5 finishes, event wins and points on the board at every meet they’ve been to. Though the Red women may put up a fight, it may be hard to beat Columbia, even on home turf.
“We’re really looking to just continue swimming our best, training hard and looking for personal bests,” Mary Cirella said. “Our best shot at causing damage is at Ivy League Championships, so we intend to train hard up until then.”
The Red is more likely to use this meet as a time to test its limits. With the high power competition the team will be looking to continue to shave seconds off their personal bests and keep close to the Columbia swimmers.
“We’re looking to Ivy Championships as our big goal, everything up until now has been a part of doing well at Championships,” Cirella said.
Both the men’s and women’s teams are training hard as the season comes to a close, preparing for the upcoming championship meets in the upcoming month. Now it’s all up to the individual swimmers to make it or break it in their event.
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