Co-captain Ali Brown '02 described the mindset of the team aptly when discussing the goals she and the team had put before themselves. "Individually, we each had set goals for ourselves and for our performances;" she said. "But, as a team, we had one goal and that was to beat Middlebury." And they did just that. The Jeffs trounced rival Middlebury College by over 100 points. The meet's champions, Williams College, won by a much narrower margin than in years past, giving the Jeffs an even bigger confidence boost.
Brown was impressed by the astonishing number of swimmers Amherst will be sending to this year's NCAA Division III Championships. "It was definitely a very exciting meet and I think the best part about it had to have been how many of us made National cuts," said Brown. "I think it will probably be the largest team we've ever had go on to Nationals." Four of the five relays scored National cuts and an impressive 10 individual swims will be considered for an invitation to the meet.
The three day meet started on Friday with the team of Liz Chiang '05, Sarah Malmfeldt '02, Brown and Rebecca Stein '05. The women garnered a National 'B' cut time of 1:38.92 in the 200-yard freestyle relay to take third place, losing to Middlebury by only two-tenths of a second.
The individual events began with Allison Martin '02 taking fourth in the very close 50-yard breaststroke. The 500-yard freestyle was a perfect illustration of the depth of this year's team, as Amherst placed five swimmers in the top 15, including three in the top 10.
However, the most exciting individual race of the night was a toss-up between the 50-yard backstroke and the 50-yard freestyle, with the top eight qualifiers in both events all touching within a second of each other.
Chiang managed to capture third in the backstroke and fifth in the freestyle, while fellow freshman Stein garnered a second place finish in the freestyle with her nationally qualifying time of 24.45.
Jill Wyrick '05 posted a personal best in the next event, the 200-yard individual medley, reaping the benefits of an automatic national qualifying time of 2:09.51 to take second.
"We started off strong and just kept going," said Brown. "We expected Middlebury to be winning or at least be right on top of us after Friday, because their strength lies in the shorter events, but when at the end of finals we were ahead we knew that we were going to be able to beat them in the end."
Saturday started off once again with a nationally qualifying time in the opening event, the 200-yard medley relay, and the Jeffs never looked back.
Alexis Johnston '05 turned in an incredible performance in the 1000-yard freestyle to capture Amherst's second individual second place finish.
The next event gave the Jeffs two more national qualifiers with a third place finish from Brown and a fifth place finish from Morgan Bayer '03.
The 100-yard breaststroke gave Wyrick her second national cut, as well as another second place finish; Martin and Hillary Stockbridge '05 were not far behind, taking fifth and sixth.
The last individual event of the day gave Amherst yet another national qualifier, as Michelle McCreary '05 posted an impressive time of 59.92 in the morning that would have won the event had she repeated the performance that night at finals. However, her swim at finals gave her a still-impressive fourth place finish.
The meet's final day followed the pattern of the two days before, giving Amherst five more nationally-qualifying swims. McCreary posted another qualifying cut to take second in the 200-yard backstroke.
The next two events posted similar results, as Stein took third in the 100-yard freestyle and Wyrick took second in the 200-yard breaststroke, both finishing well before the national cut-off times in their respective races.
The highlight of the final day, however, was Amherst's only first place finish, with Bayer taking the 200-yard butterfly for the third year in a row, giving her a strong edge going into NCAAs.
The women are now looking ahead to March 14-16, when they hope to turn in their best performance yet at the NCAAs in Ohio.