In their first official meets of the year, both the men’s and women’s swim teams emerged victorious at home, with the men easily handling the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the women dispatching both UMass and Northeastern University.
The men’s team won all its races and took the meet with a final score of 201-93, but UMass managed to narrow the gap with wins in both diving events.
The women’s competition was much closer, with Bruno edging out Northeastern University 156-144 and UMass 173-127. The Bears won just four of the 14 races and only one of the first seven, while the Huskies won six total and the Minutemen won four overall, sweeping the two diving events.
The keys to the women’s victory were their second- and third-place finishes, of which the Bears boasted two more than all their opponents combined. But victory was not assured until Bruno placed first and second in the final women’s event, the 200-meter freestyle relay.
“We started out pretty slow, but we finished strong,” said Head Coach Peter Brown.
Brown said he was happy with his team’s effort. “It was the kind of meet when we needed everybody to chip in, and we got that,” he said.
“The performance as a team was pretty good,” said Kate Dillione ’15, who won both of her individual events — the 100- and 200-meter freestyle races — and was the anchor of a third-place 400-meter medley relay and first-place 200-meter freestyle relay.
“We expected to win against both teams,” she said. “We definitely did what we were supposed to do.”
Another winner at the meet was Brian Barr ’15, who came first in the men’s 200 freestyle, eighth in the 500-meter freestyle and third as part of the 200 freestyle relay.
“We were all extremely satisfied with where we are,” he said.
Barr said he was surprised by the team’s clean sweep and happy with what the performance means for the rest of the season. “Our times are placing us high within the Ivy League,” he said.
Brown praised the diving teams as well as his swimmers, though their results were not as sterling.
“They did reasonably well,” he said. But he said they did not meet their potential, adding that the divers believe they are “a little better than they showed.”
Both the men and women had a slight disadvantage because they were competing in their first meets of the year, while both UMass and Northeastern had already participated in several. But the Bears had an unofficial scrimmage two weeks ago that supplied critical experience.
Dillione described the scrimmage as “really helpful” and said it helped to remove “some of the freshmen’s first meet jitters.”
Barr agreed, noting that it is “always good to get out and race a fast team and prepare yourself for the next meet.”
“The scrimmage helped to an extent,” Brown said, noting that the team “still had unknowns.”
“We learned a lot that’s going to help us going forward,” he said.
The teams’ next meet is Nov. 16 at home against the University of Maine.
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