Jamie Lovette swam a 1:35.94 in the 200 free during the Saturday prelims session of the NESCAC men’s championships, beating the previous DIII record of 1:36.42.
The previous record was set at the 2017 DIII championships by Johns Hopkins’ Evan Holder. Lovette, swimming for Williams, will have another chance to improve his time tonight in finals.
| Lovette’s 200 Free Splits (2022) | Holder’s 200 Free Splits (2017) |
| 22.12 | 22.41 |
| 24.23 | 24.40 |
| 24.88 | 24.81 |
| 24.71 | 24.80 |
| Total: 1:35.94 | Total: 1:36.42 |
Lovette had faster splits than Holder in every 50 except for the third. He holds the 1st spot heading into finals, with Tufts’ Victor Vollbrechthausen over 3 seconds behind in 2nd place at 1:39.03.
Lovette accelerated up the DIII charts to have the fastest time in the division, having previously been only 31st in the event. The next-closest behind him, Nicholas Gouldie, has a 1:36.70.
Lovette is currently a senior at Williams. Since the previous two DIII championships were canceled due to COVID-19, this will be his opportunity to race for the NCAA title after being deprived of that ability for half of his college career.
You can watch Lovette’s race here. With this race, Lovette also gets the NESCAC record, the meet record, and the school record.
He previously won the 500 free at NESCAC championships with his time of 4:26.07. He also helped break the NESCAC record in the 400 medley relay, swimming the free leg in 43.70.
After last night’s finals, Williams sits in 1st place with 887 points. Tufts is currently 2nd with 688.5 points, and Bowdoin is 3rd with 443 points.
Long overdue for D3 swimmers to break 1:36… Congrats to this guy! Also, Williams has looked absolutely incredible at this meet, beating even my most optimistic projections. I could see them suddenly being in the mix even for an NCAA title. The biggest issue though is how all of their swimmers are forced to peak so close to NCAAs rather than getting invites in the fall and trainings through. For that reason only I still think it’s Emory and JHU who will battle for the title, but we will see!
While I agree it’s usually easier for the teams with invites to hit the NCAAs taper, Williams and the NESCAC more generally have a pretty good track record at improving their times at Nationals so I wouldn’t rule them out.
NESCAC has had their Nov 1 start date rule for decades. They know how to handle February and March pretty well.
Williams is looking very, very fast. This team has a ton of potential for this year and years to come.
With their A+ academics I bet top end talent is going to be pouring in in the next few years.
High level academics are a staple of many of the top D3 teams, however, such as Johns Hopkins, MIT, UChicago, and the rest of the UAA for that matter. I do agree that there seems to be a trend of athletes increasingly sacrificing scholarship money in order to get a top-notch education, though. These teams, and the Ivy League teams, for example, seem to be attracting much better talent than they could even five or ten years ago. Northwestern’s recent success seems to be another example of that trend.
I think most of the top tier academic D3 schools (NESCAC, UAA, MIT, etc..) are going to start having times that would rival most mid-conference D1 programs. Not power 5 conferences, and not the Ivy’s (since they’re like those D3 programs but Ivy League..), but the rest of the country.
Northwestern has had success all along. Grevers and Willimovsky went to NU. In 2005, NU almost won the 400 MR at NCAA’s.
Williams is absolutely dominating right now
One of the hardest workers out there!
Williams is swimming great at this meet. Excellent relays, multiple records, and flooding the podium in several events. Go Ephs!
So many people got really close to that record, and it’s so great to see Jamie destroy it like that. Well done!
When they announced he broke the record the whole pool cheered. It was really exciting.
Yeah—wasn’t the record for a long time a 1:36 from in the 1980s? Obviously a crazy D3 swim for it’s time but still wild it took that long to break through
Dennis mulvihill 1988 Kenyon 1:36.63
Stood until Holder broke it