Women’s Swimmers Take Third Place in NESCAC

Last weekend, the Middlebury women’s swimming and diving team traveled to the Wesleyan Natatorium in Middletown, Conn. to swim in the three-day NESCAC Championship meet on Feb. 13-15. Middlebury maintained the third-place position from day one of competition, defending their third-place title from last year with a score of 1,203.

While the Panthers were not able to edge out the league champion, Williams (2,103.5), or runner-up Bates (1,345), the women outswam Amherst (fourth place) by a solid 162 points to assert their dominance after an extremely tight loss by just 9.5 points to the Lord Jeffs at last year’s championship. By placing significantly higher than sixth place Connecticut College, Middlebury righted another wrong after losing to the Camels in the first dual meet of the season back in November.

“We couldn’t have done anything more last weekend as far as percentages of best times,” said Head Coach Bob Rueppel of the Panthers’ performance.

The first event served as a good indicator of what was to come, as the Middlebury quartet of Jamie Hillas ’15, Morgan Burke ’17, Megan Griffin ’16 and Courtney Haron ’15 placed third in the 200-yard freestyle relay (1:35.02), just 0.66 of a second behind first-place Williams, and seven hundredths behind Bates. This effort improved upon Middlebury’s 2008 school record in the 200 free relay by 0.42 seconds.

The legendary team of Hillas, Burke, Griffin and Haron did not stop there, and went on to set another school record in the 400 freestyle relay during the final event of the meet by posting an NCAA ‘B’ cut time of 3:29.18. Though this time also surpassed the previous Wesleyan Natatorium pool record, Middlebury earned third place in the event behind Williams and Bowdoin.

The Panthers maintained their third-place trend with performances in the 400 medley relay by Sarah Bartholomae ’18, Hillas, Griffin and Burke (3:49.13), as well as the 200 medley relay by Bartholomae, Hillas, Griffin and Haron (1:44.72).

Hillas carried the team’s success in the relays into her individual events. After tying for first place in the 50 breaststroke last year, Hillas finished as the sole champion in the event this year, setting a pool record and improving upon her school record with a time of 28.82. On top of this, Hillas touched the wall second in the 100 breast (1:03.10) and fifth in the 200 breast (2:21.33).

The conference recognized Hillas for accumulating a total of 337 points throughout her four years of championship competition — the second-most ever earned by an individual.

Behind Hillas, Nora O’Leary ’17 finished seventh in the 200 breast with an NCAA ‘B’ cut time of 2:22.29.

Griffin swam a 25.34 in the 50 butterfly to place second in the event. Also in butterfly, Lily Sawyer ’16 finished sixth in the 200 fly (2:09.22) — having posted a NCAA ‘B’ cut time of 2:07.88 in her preliminary swim — and Margaret Pollack ’18 placed 10th in the same event (2:10.46).

Another NCAA ‘B’ cut time came from Maddie Pierce ’16 in the 400 individual medley prelims (4:35.62), where she placed eighth for Middlebury in the finals.
More top-10 performances included Burke’s clocking a 52.29 in the 100 free for the seventh-place position, and Bartholomae’s earning 10th place in the 200 back (2:07.64).

Diver Adrianna Baker ’15 also made important contributions to the Panthers’ success, placing fifth in the one-meter dive finals and fourth in the three-meter finals. She racked up 51 points in the meet.

Though conference competition is over, the Middlebury women who’s NCAA ‘B’ cut times qualify will race in the NCAA Division III Swimming & Diving National Championships in Woodlands, Texas at the end of March. “We’ll be going into that meet really trying to score top eight in all four of [our strong] relays, which would be a great accomplishment,” said Coach Rueppel.

The men’s Swimming and Diving team will host the men’s NESCAC Championship this Friday-Sunday, Feb. 20-22 at the Middlebury Natatorium, hoping to better their seventh-place finish from last year’s championship.