With Friday’s loss to Navy, the Columbia men’s swimming team (4-5) has dropped to a losing record for the first time since November. The Midshipmen triumphed over the Lions 158-131.
The meet began positively for the Light Blue despite Navy’s unusual 25-meter pool. Columbia’s A-team—comprised of Johnny Bailey, Eric Tang, Bruno Esquen, and Adam Powell—narrowly beat out the competition with a time of 1:44.84 in the 200m relay. The crew touched the wall just eight-hundredths of a second ahead of the second-place team.
Navy responded by sweeping first through third-place points in the next three events—the 800m freestyle, 200m freestyle and 100m backstroke.
As usual, freshman Sean MacKenzie and sophomores Chester Dols and Alex Smith were the first three Columbia distance swimmers to finish, but against this strong Navy squad, MacKenzie was only the fifth man to touch the wall.
The outcome of the 200m freestyle was much the same. Columbia’s top swimmers—freshman Mitchell Phillips and tri-captain Darren Pagan—only earned fourth and fifth-place points. Phillips finished five seconds out of first with a time of 1:57.39. Pagan finished in 1:58.30.
Tang represented the Lions in the 100m breaststroke. Tang took second in 1:04.58, just .11 seconds out of first place. Fellow senior Ross Ramone finished in fourth place.
Powell finally turned the tide for the Light Blue in the 50m freestyle. He outswam the entire field by over half a second with a time of 23.08 seconds.
In similar fashion, freshman Jason Collazo topped the charts in the 1m dive to bring in another nine points for the Lions. Collazo collected 289.95 points on his way to the victory.
Powell swam again in the 100m freestyle, but this time his efforts were only enough for third place.
After dropping the 200m backstroke, Tang stepped up once again, taking second in the 200m breaststroke in 2:22.37. Ramone was the next swimmer to touch the wall, finishing third in 2:23.59.
After sweeping the first three places in the 400m freestyle, the Midshipmen had captured all the points they needed to ensure the win and competed solely as exhibition swimmers in the last four events.
“The team struggled today mentally more than anything else … I had a feeling we would not have much in reserve for Navy,” head coach Jim Bolster said.
Despite the unfortunate outcome, the Lions will have to recover quickly and prepare for Ivy League matches against Princeton and Dartmouth.
“Princeton is the site of our Ivy League Championship meet so we will have a great opportunity to check out the pool and get used to the racing environment,” Bolster said.
After taking on the Tigers, the Lions will return home to Uris Pool to host Dartmouth in their final dual meet of the season.
Bolster has complete faith that his team will bounce back from this loss to Navy, stating “We should have no trouble responding next weekend.”