The men's swimming and diving team set three new school records in College Park, Md., over the weekend on its way to an eighth-place finish at the ACC Championship with a score of 88 points. Virginia, which replaced North Carolina as the dominant team in ACC swimming about four years ago, won all but two events on the way to a win with an unprecedented 872 points.
The real shock of the weekend, however, was Georgia Tech, which after only two years of scholarship recruiting, moved up from a bottom-tier team to finish second with 580.5 points.
This year it was tougher to make it into finals than any other year I've been swimming," said senior captain Ryan Harsch. The conference is getting faster all the time, but I think we actually had more people make it back this year than any other I remember."
The Blue Devils got off to a rocky start on day one. The preliminaries went well, as freshman John Humphrey cruised through the 200-yard individual medley to set a new school record with his time of 1:51.72. The time was good enough to earn him a spot in finals that evening, where he swam a 1:52.63 to finish 15th in the event. Humphrey also finished 20th in the 400-yard individual medley with a time of 4:02.09, and 23rd in the 200-yard butterfly with a 1:54.79.
"Breaking the record was so special for me because I was able to do it alongside two of my teammates," Humphrey said. [Dave] Peck and [Justin] Ward both broke the old mark at the same time I did, and it is a great feeling to have three people on the same team with the fastest times in school history. That tells you something about where this team is headed, and I was just lucky to come out on top."
Disaster struck for Duke during finals on day one however, as both the 200-yard freestyle and 400-yard medley relays were disqualified for illegal exchanges.
"The fact that our relays got disqualified really hurt our point total," Harsch said. "The point total doesn't really measure how well we swam though, and most everyone on the team posted best times."
The swimmers recovered to smash two school records on the second day of competition, led by junior John Samotyj and freshman Teddy Helfers. Samotyj finished the 100-yard butterfly in 49.86 during preliminaries to break the school record in the event. Later that evening, he touched in 49.97 to earn 12th place. Samotyj also set a Duke season-best time in the 50-yard freestyle, swimming a 21.33 to finish 34th.
"I was really proud of the way the team swam," Samotyj said. "Despite having a difficult first day, the team recuperated and swam really well the last two days. It's also really nice to see my name up on the record board."
Helfers made his mark in the 400-yard individual medley, finishing in 4:03.83 to break the school record in preliminaries. In the finals he broke the record again, swimming a 4:01.09 to place 18th in the event. Helfers placed 23rd in the 500-yard freestyle with a Duke season-best time of 4:34.41, and 20th in the 1,650-yard freestyle, finishing college swimming's longest event in 16:17.01.
The meet was the last for seniors Harsch and fellow captain Chris Fleizach. Harsch was 22nd in the 200-yard backstroke, finishing in 1:55.09, and 27th in the 100-yard backstroke with a time of 53.63. Fleizach tied the school record in the 200-yard backstroke during preliminaries with his time of 1:49.63, later finishing 15th in the event with a final time of 1:50.44. Fleizach also finished 20th in the 100-yard backstroke with a 51.14.
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