Women’s Swimming and Diving Powers to Third Place Finish at NESCAC Meet

The Middlebury women’s swimming and diving teams finished in third place at the 2014 NESCAC Championships this past weekend, Feb. 14-16, at Samuelson-Muir Pool in Williamstown, Mass. Host Williams won the event with 2,007 points, followed by Amherst (1,216.5) and Middlebury (1,207). Bates (1,132) and Connecticut (1,000.5) rounded out the top five in the 11-team event.

The weekend held a full slate of competition for the women, with morning trials and evening finals sessions on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

After sitting in second place – behind only Williams – for most of the championship, Middlebury entered the weekend’s final event, the 400-yard freestyle relay, trailing Amherst by just 11.5 points. The Panther squad of Morgan Burke ’17, Jamie Hillas ’15, Megan Griffin ’16 and Courtney Haron ’15 finished just ahead of Amherst in fourth place with a time of 3:30.52. Because the Lord Jeffs finished just one place back in fifth, however, Middlebury was unable to make up the whole point differential and Amherst hung on for a tight second-place finish.

The third-place finish was an improvement for the women, who finished fourth in both the 2012 and 2013 NESCAC championships, and their best team result since a runner-up finish in 2008. This year’s margin between second and third was the closest that any team in the conference has come to unseating either Amherst or Williams in the top two spots since that 2008 finish.

Hillas dominated the competition, breaking three school records on the weekend. She lowered her 2012 Middlebury record in the 50-yard breaststroke first in preliminaries and then in the finals, hitting the wall in a speedy 29.10 seconds. Hillas finished in a tie with Tufts’ Jenny Hu for the NESCAC title in the event, and their time was also good for a joint pool record.

Hillas also improved on her school record in the 100-yard breaststroke, finishing in 1:03.90 and missing first place by only 0.01 seconds. Finally, she broke her own 2013 school record in the 200-yard breaststroke with a time of 2:20.21, finishing third in the race.
Griffin finished second in the 50-yard butterfly in 25.63 seconds, breaking a school mark that had stood since 2008.

The relay team of captain Andie Tibbetts ’14, Hillas, Griffin and Burke finished only 0.02 seconds behind winner Amherst in the 200-yard medley relay on Saturday night, finishing with a time of 1:44.51. The squad broke the previous school record of 1:45.25, which was set back in 2009, with a time that was good for an NCAA provisional ‘B’ cut.

Tibbetts – who has accumulated a total of 287.5 points in NESCAC championship events over her four years – was honored at the meet’s end as the fifth-highest-scoring senior in the conference.

“Our performances throughout the weekend were remarkable across the board and surpassed anybody’s expectations,” Tibbetts said.

“This meet marks the strength of our program and bodes extremely well for the coming years.”
I think what really made the difference this year was the energy we showed on deck,” Hillas said.

Colleen Harper ’14 finished in eighth place in the one-meter diving competition on Friday with a score of 381.60. She improved on Sunday to place fourth in the 3-meter event with a score of 433.30. Harper was the only diver to compete for the Panthers.

The 200-yard medley relay team will compete in the NCAA Division III Championships in Indianapolis, Ind. over the weekend of March 19-22. Several swimmers from that relay will also compete in the individual events in which they earned NCAA ‘B’ cuts. Hillas will compete in both the 100 and 200-yard breaststroke, Griffin in the 100-yard butterfly and Burke in 200-yard freestyle.

The men’s swimming and diving team will compete for NESCACs this weekend, Feb. 21-23, at Bowdoin. The Panthers finished in fifth place at the event last year, an improvement upon their seventh-place finish from 2012.

Ian Mackay ’14 will look to defend his 2013 conference titles in both the 50-yard freestyle and 50-yard butterfly events, while Stephan Koenigsberger ’16 looks for his first NESCAC title in the 50-yard breaststroke after finishing second in that event a year ago.