The men's swimming and diving team broke eight school records and set a host of personal bests en route to a seventh-place finish at the Ivy League Championships, held at Princeton's DeNunzio Pool Thursday through Saturday.
Daniel Ricketts '09 posted three top-three finishes to lead the team.
Brown scored 616.5 points to finish comfortably ahead of Dartmouth (426) for seventh place out of the eight Ivy schools. Princeton secured the Ivy title in its own pool, finishing with 1663.5 points, followed by Harvard (1311.5), Cornell (1095), Yale (1033.5), Columbia (862.5) and Penn (808.5).
The Bears posted 21 times that cracked the top 10 in the history of the program.
"I think that as a group, we were over 90 percent personal best lifetime times," said Richard Alexander '09. "I think as a small team we should be proud of where we finished. We're not necessarily at the top of the pack, but considering the resources we've been given and being a small team, I think that we did a pretty good job this year."
The Bears did not head into the meet with lofty expectations, according to C.J. Kambe '10, after beating only Dartmouth during the
regular season.
"Looking back at our times and our scores from the season, I think we had pretty realistic expectations for what we were going to do, and then we ended up exceeding those," he said.
Day One
On Thursday, the Bears got off to a fast start in the 200 free relay, as Ricketts, Tucker Wetmore '10, Trent Huxley '10 and Benjamin Zlotoff '09 combined to post a time of 1:20.87, a Brown record good for fifth place.
Two Brown swimmers faced off in the B final of the 200 I.M., as Alexander took 12th place with a time of 1:50.43, while Ryan Kikuchi '11 followed 0.58 seconds behind in 15th.
Ricketts then set the first of his four school records by posting a time of 19.77 in the 50 free, good for third place in the meet.
"He definitely had a very strong meet, probably one of the strongest performances of a Brown swimmer in the last decade," Alexander said.
Kambe followed with Brown's best result of the day, scoring 290.95 points to take second place in the 1-meter dive. Jonathan Feldman '12 placed 14th with a score of 243.25.
The Bears ended the day with a fifth-place finish in the 400 medley relay, as Zach Levko '10, Conor Carlucci '11, Alexander and Ricketts combined to finish in 3:17.14, another school record.
Day Two
Friday began with a seventh-place finish in the 200 medley relay, as Levko, Carlucci, Alexander and Zlotoff posted a time of 1:31.57.
Sam Speroni '11 touched the wall in 9:43.43 to finish 20th in the 1,000 free, while Kikuchi placed ninth in the 400 IM in 3:56.03.
Two seniors posted strong results in the 100 fly. Ricketts secured his second third-place finish with a time of 47.04, while Alexander finished in 49.05 take 14th.
In the 200 free, Wetmore placed 14th in 1:41.37, while James Hunter '12 followed 0.10 seconds behind in 15th.
The Bears closed out the day with a pair of seventh-place finishes. Levko finished the 100 back in 50.06, while the 800 free relay squad of Ricketts, Alexander, Wetmore and Hunter finished in 6:39.15.
Day Three
Speroni led off Saturday for the Bears, placing 19th in the 1,650 free in a time of 16:20.81. Kikuchi followed by finishing the 200 back in 1:47.33, good for ninth place.
Ricketts then took second place in the 100 free. His time of 43.17 set his fourth school record of the meet.
"We knew he was going to be a big scorer," Kambe said. "He's been doing really well (this season), he did really well at last year's championship. But I think he exceeded even our high expectations for him."
Carlucci followed with a 19th-place finish in the 200 breast in a time of 2:03.26. But the 2:03.05 he posted in the preliminaries set his second school record of the meet.
Alexander notched his best result of the meet in the 200 fly, touching the wall in 1:48.72 to earn eighth place and cap a strong showing.
"Every time I got on the blocks I set a lifetime best," Alexander said. "I just missed two school records in the (200) IM and the (200) Fly by less than a second, but it's still nice to be second on the all-time list. ... I made a championship final on the last night, which was pretty awesome."
Kambe closed out the diving portion of the meet by scoring 256.05 points to place 13th in the 3-meter dive.
Ricketts, Huxley, Wetmore and David Koweek '09 closed out Brown's seventh-place finish by finishing the 400 free relay in 2:59.74 to place sixth.
Now the Bears will turn their attention to a future that Kambe said has been brightened by the looming prospect of a new pool being built to replace the current temporary practice bubble behind the Olney-Margolies Athletic Center.
Alexander said he believes the team will be in good hands without him and the rest of the seniors.
"We definitely have a lot of strong leadership coming up in the program, and we have a strong recruiting class," he said. "We've always had a very tight-knit group of guys on the team."
