Women Swim, Men Sink, in Senior Day Meet

In their final home dual meet of the season on Saturday, Jan. 18, the Middlebury women’s swimming and diving team easily topped Union 209-78 while the men fell to Union 163.5-136.5. The victory gave the women a winning record at 4-3, while the men sunk to 2-5 on the year.

In the final home dual meet for the teams’ seniors, the women impressively won thirteen of the sixteen total events, and had the top two finishers in eight of those races.

The Panthers set the tone early in the 400-yard medley relay, with four different Panthers squads finishing ahead of the top Union team. The ‘A’ team consisted of Andie Tibbets ’14, Jennifer Koide ’17, Jamie Hillas ’15, and Morgan Burke ’17 and finished in a time of 4:04.20. The Panthers have won this relay four times this year and will look to earn crucial points in the race at the NESCAC Championships in February.

Hillas led the way for the women, winning three individual events: the 50-yard freestyle (24.91 seconds), 200-yard breaststroke (2:23.16), and 200-yard individual medley (2:12.30), including breaking her own school record in the 200-yard breaststroke. The national swimmer of the week earlier in January, Hillas has consistently been a top swimmer for the Panthers this year and figures to contend in several events at NESCACs, where she won the 50-yard breaststroke last year.

No other swimmers won multiple individual races, as Middlebury had seven different individual winners, demonstrating the team’s depth.

Christina Belforti paced the Dutchwomen, winning both the 200-yard backstroke and 100-yard butterfly.

Colleen Harper ’14 won both diving events for the Panthers. She had scores of 267.83 and 253.50 in the 3- and 1-meter events, respectively.

“We saw some impressive drops in time across the board after a tough week of practices,” Hillas said. “I think it’s clear that we’re ready for some great races at NESCACs.”

The men started off strong and were up 91-78 after the first nine events. However, they were unable to hold on as Union rallied past them in the final seven races.

Ian Mackay ’14, the men’s best swimmer of the day, captured both the 50-yard freestyle and 100-yard butterfly in times of 21.53 and 51.48 seconds, respectively. Mackay is the school record holder in the 50-yard freestyle with a time of 20.34 seconds and is looking to repeat as NESCAC champion in the event next month.

Other individual winners included Michael McGean ’17 in the 1000-yard freestyle (10:00.35), Stephan Koenigsberger ’16 in the 100-yard breaststroke (59.33 seconds), and Paul Lagasse ’16 in the 100-yard freestyle (48.87 seconds).

Skylar Dallmeyer-Drennen ’14.5 won the 1-meter diving event with a score of 258.90 and later finished second in the 3-meter event (234.53).

“We have been training really hard in the past few weeks and it’s encouraging to see that we can still swim fast when we are broken down from practice,” co-captain Mike Oster ’14 said. “I think that if we are able to swim like this now we are going to have a lot of success in a few weeks at NESCACs.”

Both teams will head to Williams on Saturday, Jan. 25 to face their divisional rival. Last year both the men and women fell to the NESCAC powerhouse. It will be the Panthers’ last dual meet of the season.