The freshmen swimmers excelled once again, leading the Lions to a third-place finish at the 2012 Ivy League Championships for men’s swimming and diving. This marks the third consecutive year in which the Light Blue has finished third at Ivies. Along the way, freshmen Omar Arafa and Jeremie DeZwirek took home Ivy League titles with wins in the 100-yard backstroke and the 200 backstroke, respectively. Arafa finished second in the preliminaries behind Princeton freshman Michael Strand and then came back to outtouch Strand by 14 milliseconds in the final, with a time of 47.35 seconds. A similar situation played out in the 200 backstroke, with DeZwerik finishing behind Princeton senior Colin Cordes in the preliminaries, but winning the finals in a time of 1:44.66.
Other notable performances included senior Robert Eyckmans finishing second in the 200 IM with a time of 3:51.11 and fifth in the 200 breaststroke in 1:59.26. In the finals of the 100 freestyle, Arafa finished second, with freshman Dominik Koll following him in sixth and freshman Daniel Gosek touching the wall eighth.
All of the swimmers contributed points during the meet. Freshman Stanley Wong placed in the B finals of both the 50 freestyle and the 100 breaststroke. Freshman Alex Ngan swam in the C finals for the 50 freestyle and the 100 butterfly. Other swimmers that swam in the finals of an event included senior Bruno Esquen, sophomore Eric Traub, sophomore Andrew Wood, freshman Stephen Raynes, freshman David Jakl, and sophomore Harry Stephenson.
The divers all scored points—junior Jason Collazo placed second in the B finals of the one-meter dive, and freshman Micah Rembrandt finished right behind him in third. Sophomore Michaelangelo Borghi also picked up nine points with a 17th-place finish. Collazo won the B finals of the three-meter dive.
Unfortunately for the Lions, the 400-yard medley relay team of Arafa, sophomore Matt Swallow, Esquen, and junior John Wright was disqualified, causing the Light Blue to miss about 50 points. The other relay teams all performed well, with the 400 freestyle relay team of Arafa, Gosek, Koll, and Wright tying for second place with Princeton. The 200 freestyle relay team of Wong, Gosek, Ngan, and Wright finished third with a time of 1:20.49. The 800 freestyle relay team of Jakl, Arafa, Wright, and Koll also finished third with a time of 6:29.72.
The Lions finished the meet with 1,107.5 points, behind first-place Princeton and second-place Harvard.
By virtue of their first-place finishes, Arafa and DeZwirek were named to the All-Ivy first team. Second-place finishers Eyckmans and the 400 freestyle relay squad of Arafa, Gosek, Koll and Wright were named to the All-Ivy second team.
