Let it snow

We were planning to postpone the main recap until the morning, when our mood is generally better, but we will be busy driving around in the snow, so we will give what we can now. Be safe out there.

UAA

Kaley McIntyre is not just faster than she was this time last year. She is faster than she was at Nationals last year. Today she won 200 Free at UAAs with a time of 1:46.87. That’s almost three seconds ahead of second place Penelope Helm (who, let’s not forget, is really fast), and more than half a second faster than the time (1:47.44) that made her national champion in 200 Free. Yesterday, she bested her 50 Free time, a 50 Free time that made her national champion in that event. Ms. McIntyre was not national champion in 100 Free (she instead opted to swim 200 Back, and she did final). The fastest time in the division last year was 49.28, and the current fastest time is 50.12 (Ella Roberson, MIT). Let’s see what happens Saturday.

Calista Lynch is an NYU First-Year who did not just win the 400 IM. She blew it up, winning the event by 4.1 seconds. The next two finishers were also First-Years. Bridget Ye is an extraordinary swimmer for Chicago who’s name will just keep coming up. And third place belonged to Sophie Cox, also a First-Year from NYU.

If anyone out there is feeling confident about facing NYU’s women, you are kidding yourself, man. We still think the NCAA format favors Denison - again this is about the structure of the events and scoring - but coming out of these conference championships, we are going to rerun the model, just to double-check.

Alesha Kelly’s 54.90 in the 100 Fly places her firmly in the A Final at Nationals. We are also tracking Megan Junger’s excursions into 100 Fly, and we are believers. She is definitely in invite territory in that event. A big part of Nationals is just keeping your nerve, staying fueled/hydrated/rested and swimming your seed time. The veteran Megan Jungers is a good bet to overperform in that field.

Major congratulations to Alicia Soosai of Chicago for winning the highly competitive 100 Breast. This is however a good example of how much depth matters in these championship formats. We mean, Alicia Soosai’s win was convincing, nearly half a second, but Emory had four swimmers in that event final. Emory won that event final before it even started. Katie Cohen, Caroline Zhu, and Fiona Arwood are names we have typed many times, but we are happy to also recognize Ali Kaiser who is swimming great.

Men

Jake Meyer dropped a 52.92 in the 100 Breast. We are running out of ways to talk about how good Jake Meyer is at all things breaststroke.

Division III’s fastest podcaster - CWRU’s Peter Meng - came in second in the 400 IM with a 3:53.90. Mr. Meng is having an incredible season, and is one of the truly elite swimmers in D3. When asked what aspect of UAAs most needed mentioning, he said ‘Crow Thorsen’, the Emory swimmer who took first in that 400 IM.

According to Mr. Meng, and fellow podcasters and CWRU Conference Championship athletes - Griffin Gushman and Josh Hernandez - the other swimmers casting a long shadow over UAAs include:

• Braydon Morford, CMU (maybe the biggest surprise of the season)

• Nick Goudie, Emory

• Jake Meyer, Emory

• Garrett Clasen, Chicago

And ‘Derek Maas, obviously’.

We would add Arnav Deshpande, Sam Dienstag, and Cooper Costello.

NJAC

Women

Mary Washington took first place, a seeming inevitability. Kinsey Brooks is good every season (we’ll miss her, predictability is underrated), and she posted a 200 IM time that would be in the grey area between the A Final or B Final at Nationals. Regardless, it’s one more ticket to Greensboro for possibly the best swimmer in the history of that university.

Men

We have a scratch-pad beside the laptop and we scribbled the outline of a mea culpa on Merchant Marine. They might be the wild-card we missed. For structural reasons, we can’t ascribe to them the same importance we place on a program like Salisbury. But we might have missed just how good they are in the pool. Right now, they are ahead of Rowan, which we did not see coming.

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It is snowing in Granville. A lot. People are driving really slow and still managing to slide off the roads. {/sigh}¹ Lights are flickering on and off in grocery stores as snow-covered transformers call it a night, crackling and emitting brilliant blue-green flashes into the black sky. Not sure if this impacts anything in the morning.

NCAC

• Men: Denison - 1,293, Kenyon - 1,283

• Women: Denison - 1,286.5, Kenyon - 1,268.5

Expectations shape what we are seeing. If the Denison Men hang on to that narrow lead, it will be a pretty significant upset.

If the Denison Women hang on to that narrow lead it will be kind of a let-down for them. It will be a win, which was expected. But it would also suggest that their nearest rivals are narrowing the gap. Given these scores, a double Denison win, a double Kenyon win, and any of the other combinations are possible.

Women: If you just go off seed times (and drop-out Ceyda Yazici who sustained a heartbreaking knee injury last week), in the remaining events - 200 BK, 100 FR, 200 BR, 200 FL - we count 14 Denison swimmers making finals and 14 Kenyon swimmers making finals. So, barring some disruption in expected order of finish, it will come down to the 100 IM and diving. Or DQs. Or some combination of those things.

We are going out on a limb. We think that Kenyon ladies hold serve in the more conventional events, and they win the meet in the 100 IM and diving. Barring DQs.

Men:

• In 200 Back, Yurii Kosian should win the event and Ethan Manske should final, but Devin Testin will lead a contingent of five (5) Denison swimmers into the finals.

• In 100 Free, Kenyon might simply dunk on Denison six times in a row - Aleksa Dobric, Djordje Dragojlovic, Daniel Brooks, Marko Krtinic, Aleksa Kisic, and Pedro Mello Araujo - giving a slight lead back to Kenyon.

• A slight lead that last until the start of the next event, 200 Breast, where Denison is likely to bring a 6-3 advantage into the finals. Elijah Venos, Patrick Daly, and Gavin Jones should finish 1-2-3. Liam Nelson, Christian McIntire, and Josh Thomas should help ensure that Kenyon’s point scorers are limited to Noel Tumbasz (who, let’s be clear, is a First-Year and is absolutely amazing), Kenyon stalwart Sam Brown, and Senior standout Java Marvarov.

• Then in 200 Fly, Marko Krtinic and Noah Hargrove may go 1-2…and Denison wins the meet as Max Soja, Dylan Escano, Max Lough, and Luke Landis all final.

There you have it. We think the Denison Men might actually win this thing.

Of course, it could all go the other way, one person might DQ, throwing it all into chaos. But, if there is no disruption, the Denison Men are poised for a signature win.

OK - it’s midnight, so we are done. There’s more to cover but it will need to wait. Saturday is going to be awesome.

1. We grew up in Rochester, NY. It’s just snow. Figure it out.