The Amherst women’s swimming team will, without a doubt, be sorry to lose senior backstroke specialist Brittany Sasser next year. Having given up a chance to compete in the Olympics to swim and pursue other activities at a Div. III school, Sasser has been called the “spark to the Amherst Medleys” and has never lost a backstroke event in the National Championships in her time at Amherst.

This year was no different. Sasser led the team to a stunning undefeated NESCAC season and a third-place finish at NESCACs. At the NCAA Div. III Championships last weekend, she swam as the second leg on three winning relays, shattering the NCAA Championship record in the 800-yard freestyle relay, with the help of teammates Kendra Stern ’11, Meaghan Stern ’08 and Alex Lee ’09. The quartet’s time of 7:22.78 broke the record it had set earlier in the season by almost eight seconds. Sasser also picked up a second-place finish in the 200-yard freestyle event, besting her NESCAC Championship-winning time of 2:03.97 by more than two seconds.

On the second day of competition, Sasser broke the previous championship record—which she set last year at Nationals—in the 100-yard backstroke, winning the event in 53.85 seconds. The next day, she did the same in the 200-yard backstroke, finishing in 1:56.33, more than seven seconds ahead of the second-place finisher.

Thanks largely to Sasser, the women took home second place. Next year, she passes the torch to a number of underclassmen, led by first-year Kendra Stern, to continue Amherst’s dominance.