Swimming Confident Against Yale

The Columbia men's swimming team will face off against a determined Yale squad today at 4 p.m. in New Haven in search of its second straight Ivy victory. They will be competing for the first time since the 2006 Eastern Intercollegiate Swimming League Championships when Columbia finished in third place, two places ahead of Yale's men.

Yale is confident after a solid win over Fairfield last week, but Columbia already has one Ivy win under its belt and will be sticking to its plan of attack. Although the team is in the midst of heavy training, senior team captain Tobin White feels very confident in the team's abilities.

"Columbia is not going to rest, we will be continuing to train through and hopefully we should perform regardless of our fitness," White explained. "It will be training as usual, then we'll go up to New Haven. That's our goal, we train hard all year and then we rest. There will probably be a few Yale guys wearing fast skins or jammers; we will not, but I am 100 percent confident in our team."

Columbia will be facing some worthy challengers, especially in the Yale sophomore class that dominated the Fairfield meet and were major team contributors in their freshman season. Sophomore Alex Righi won the 100 free at EISL last year and should be formidable against Columbia's sprinters. Sophomore Dennen McCloskey has been a standout and is poised to contribute in the free and back events. Sophomore Kyle McElroy will also pose a challenge for Lion swimmers, competing in the breaststroke and individual medley events.

Head coach Jim Bolster is sure to put forth the strongest Columbia lineup possible against Yale as they will be reaching to take down a major competitor.

"Coach Jim looks at the results of last year's meets and has statistics for the freshmen," White said. "From that he builds the best line up he can and mentally scores it out. It will definitely be a Yale-specific lineup."

The team morale is high and their enthusiasm over the strong performances of the freshmen is especially positive.

"They are so motivated, they come to practice all the time and they are performing well." White said. "That's what we expect, and we're happy that they are living up to those expectations because we know what they are capable of, and it's great that they can transfer their hard work into a race situation."