One Last Tuneup for CU Before Ivy Championships

With the regular season over, the Columbia men’s swimming and diving team will be focusing on the upcoming Eastern College Athletic Conference championships this weekend in Cambridge, Mass.

The ECAC championships feature a wide variety of teams, including several Ivies. Last year, Columbia competed against Harvard, Marist College, John Hopkins, Rider, Binghamton, Yale, Penn, Loyola, and Iona College. Columbia finished in third place with 387.5 points, behind second-place Marist and overall champion Harvard, who totaled 513 points.

In the 2008 ECAC championships, the Lions had some difficulty breaking into the top three spots in most of the events. Their times were strong enough, however, to edge out John Hopkins for third place. Some notable finishes for Columbia were Jordan Kobb’s second-place finish in the 400-yard IM as well as a third-place finish by the 200-yard freestyle relay team. The relay team consisted of Chris Scruton, Gunnar Aasen, Kobb, and Chris O’Connor.

This year, the Lions will “be locked in great battles for a finish in the top three,” head coach Jim Bolster wrote in an e-mail, adding that “Harvard, Rider and Johns Hopkins will provide plenty of competition.”

The first day of competition is set to begin this Friday at 11 a.m. at Harvard. The competition will continue until Sunday. A solid performance at the ECAC championships will not only boost the confidence of those competing, but will also provide some momentum for Columbia, who will compete in the Ivy championships next weekend.