The Cornell Daily Sun (https://cornellsun.com/author/marybarger/page/4/)
“These are two really tough teams in the league and they were ready for us” said head swim coach Patrick Gallagher. “I expected our team to fight and compete from beginning to end and they met that expectation as well.”
Cornell men’s swimming and diving started its season off with a strong performance in Hanover this past weekend, competing in a tri-meet against Dartmouth and Harvard. The Red defeated Dartmouth while falling to Harvard — the same result it had in the Dartmouth-Harvard tri-meet during the 2015 season. “This first league meet is always interesting because it shows us exactly where we are at,” said head swim coach Wes Newman. “Our goal as a team is to continue improving from this point on and building on our performances. I’m satisfied with how the team swam and dove this past weekend, and know that we are on track to continue improving over the course of the season.”
Cornell lost to Harvard with a score of 198-96, while defeating Dartmouth, 176-123.
Cornell men’s swimming and diving enters the 2016-2017 season with a unified goal in mind: to improve its dual meet record and ultimately rise in the Ivy League. The team aims to build on the success of last year’s season with the addition of new faces and the improvement of old. Head coach Wes Newman expects his three captains, senior David Zurmuhl, senior Luke Reisch and junior Jack Brenneman, to “continue a strong tradition of leaders on the team.”
Their leadership will be especially important in guiding the team’s ten freshmen, a talented group with the potential to fill the gaps in the lineup left by last year’s seniors. “Freshman year is always a big adjustment in college, and balancing that with athletics can be a challenge,” Newman said. “I know that if this class balances both its athletic and academic responsibilities well this season, they will make an immediate positive impact on our program.”
Some significant gaps the freshmen look to fill include those left by alumni Victor Luo and Taylor Adams, who specialized in breaststroke and sprint events, respectively, and helped the team to its fifth-place finish at the Ivy League Championships in 2016, which was the team’s best finish since 2009.