MIDDLEBURY, VT - For the 10th year in a row, the Williams College women's swimming and diving team has captured the NESCAC Championship. Amherst (1,376), Middlebury (1,148), and Tufts (1,070.5) were no match for the Ephs, who finished their third and final day of NESCAC competition with an astounding 1,954 points - the highest NESCAC score ever recorded for the team.
"I cannot put into words how unbelieveably deep, talented and well connected our team was going into this," said a proud head coach Steve Kuster after the meet. "They did a truly unbelievable job." The 2010 Ephs team is stronger than ever, and it shows: they topped their closest competitor with a margin of 578 points.
Despite a slow start during the morning session, the Ephs came out full force this afternoon. "We typically have pretty good Sunday mornings [whereas many teams struggle to get their momentum], but I think we showed a little bit of pressure today. It wasn't fantastic...but this afternoon was just awesome," said coach. "We made the improvements that we needed to and really pushed into the afternoon session." When asked to highlight the top performances of the meet, coach let it be known that "the list of accomplishments would be very long."
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2010 NESCAC Champions (10th straight): photo courtesy of www.bearsports.com |
The earliest victory of the day came from freshman Caroline Wilson, who set a pool record with her performance in the 1650 freestyle race (16:57.22). Wilson's effort also broke the NESCAC meet record by almost 15 seconds and was an Eph record by nearly 10 seconds! Then, teammates senior Christina Metcalf and freshman KC Ha dominated the 200 breast and 200 fly (respectively) with times of 2:22.86 and 2:03.20. The evening ended with a great performance from Wilson, sophomore Carolyn Gellar, freshman Katherine O'Leary, and junior Jillian Hancock, as they breezed to a cool 3:30.43 finish in the 400 freestyle relay.
A number of Ephs finished the weekend with times that qualify
for NCAA competition, but there are a few more that are expected to
be invited. "Now we play the waiting game, but its back in the
water for those folks this week. We're preparing for an encore even
better than the main performance."
Eph head coach Steve Kuster was named the NESCAC Coach of the Year
for fashioning such an impressive season and performance at the
NESCAC Championships.
