Harvard men’s swimming and diving overpowered Columbia 207-88 in their conference matchup on Friday at Blodgett Pool. The Crimson swimmers posted the fastest time in every event, while their divers split wins with Columbia. Full results available here.
It wasn’t really Columbia’s day. The Lions saw two of their relays disqualified, and they came up on the short end of several extremely tight races. Still, Harvard put up a lot of good swims to earn their victory, including the opening 200 medley relay in which Harvard’s “A” team (1:30.01) beat the “B” team (1:30.33) by just .32.
Senior Mike Gaudiani got things started for Harvard with a pool-length-margin win in the 1000 free; he touched in 15:47.98 ahead of three Crimson teammates led by freshman Kent Haeffner (16:02.18). Gaudiani again led a quartet of Harvard swimmers to the finish in the 500 free. He clocked a 4:35.43; freshman Jack Boyd (4:35.43) was second. Boyd was also runner-up in the 200 free, finishing behind teammate Spenser Goodman (1:39.67). Columbia Michal Zyla was the top Lion in the 200 and 500, posting 1:41.70 and 4:43.51 in the respective races.
Harvard sophomore Jack Manchester won a pair of events, going 49.41 in the 100 back and 1:46.90 in the 200 back. Freshmen teammates Steven Tan and Koya Osada were second in the 100 (49.79) and 200 (1:48.30), respectively. Tan came up with a win in the 100 fly, going 48.13.
Eric Ronda of Harvard scored a double as well, taking both breaststroke events over freshman teammate Shane McNamara. The pair finished 56.24-56.39 in the 100 and 2:00.74-2:03.51 in the 200.
Jacob Luna of Harvard won the 200 fly by .01 over Columbia’s David Jakl, 1:48.90 to 1:48.91. Luna was third in the 100 fly behind Tan and teammate Max Yakubovich. Jakl, meanwhile, placed fifth in the 200 back.
Senior Griffin Schumacher handed Harvard another couple of wins in the 50 and 100 sprint free events, hitting the wall in 20.23 and 45.38. In the 50 he beat Alex Ngan (20.87) of Columbia and Yakubovich (20.91). In the 100, Schumacher was the first of four Crimson sprinters to the wall: Ed Kim (45.94), Goodman (45.98), and Paul O’Hara (46.15) followed in quick succession. Freshman Kevin Frifeldt was the fastest Lion in 47.21.
The two teams split the diving points: Columbia freshman Jayden Pantel won the 3-meter diving with 349.13 points, while Harvard freshman David Pfeifer outscored Pantel on the 1-meter boards, 311.18 to 302.10.
With Harvard’s Christian Carbone (3:57.28) swimming exhibition, Jack Foster of Columbia won the 400 IM in 4:02.33 over teammates Ronald Chen (4:06.85) and James Delgado (4:08.49). Delgado also scored fifth in the 1650.
Columbia finished with all the 200 free relay points, as Harvard’s teams all exhibitioned the final event. Jakl (20.77), Stanley Wong (20.79), Frifeldt (21.17), and Ngan (20.74) combined for 1:23.47. Harvard’s top foursome (O’Hara, Yakubovich, Kim, and Schumacher) went 1:21.61.
