Princeton Leads After Day Two of EISL Championships

PRINCETON, New Jersey, February 23. AFTER four straight sessions without an individual winner, the Princeton men's swimming and diving team finally sent somebody to the top of the podium at the EISL Championships. Of course, the Tigers didn't need an individual winner to earn the team title last year, and they will enter Saturday's final session with a better-than-130-point lead over the Harvard Crimson, which cost itself at least 50 points by getting disqualified in the 200 medley relay.

Princeton will enter Saturday's final day with 916 points, while second-place Harvard has 795.5 points. The battle for third place is a tight one between three teams; Cornell holds the spot currently with 681.5, although the Big Red owns only a 6.5-point lead over Columbia and a 7.5-point lead over Yale.

The 200 medley relay team of Mike Zee, Easton Chen, Mike Baity and Mike Carter claimed a third-place finish in the first event of the night (1:31.32). Cornell edged out Yale for the win, but the major outcome of the race was Harvard's disqualification. Even a top-five finish would have earned the Crimson 50 points, which would have made its deficit much more manageable.

Harvard's Samuel Wollner won the 1000 free in a time of 9:06.36, but Princeton picked up second- and third-place finishes from Robert Griest and Dave Ashley. Griest claimed second in 9:06.64, while Ashley placed third in 9:08.61. The Tigers also picked up a ninth-place finish from Stan Buncher (9:19.88).

Princeton built a huge lead in the next event, the 400 IM, by matching Thursday's effort with five finalists. Harvard's terrific junior, Geoff Rathgeber, claimed the win in a pool-record time of 3:47.59, but Meir Hasbani (3:51.47), Tim Ruse (3:54.70) and Will Schaffer (3:55.38) grabbed the next three spots on the podium. Chris Quemana finished sixth in 3:58.19 and Dan Eckel placed eighth in 4:04.70, rounding out the dominant performance for Princeton in the two individual medley events.

The Tigers only had one finalist in the next event, but Lennox made it work in the 100 fly. His winning time of 47.94 defeated a pair of Crimson swimmers by more than half of a second.

Princeton had eighth-place finishes in the next two events, the 200 free and the 100 breast. Carter took eighth in the free in 1:42.39, while Chen finished the breast in 57.11. Zee followed with a fifth-place finish in the 100 back with a time of 49.89. Schaffer, Tim Ruse, Quemana and Jon Hartmann ended the night with a sixth-place finish in the 800 free (6:44.79).

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