First Meets of the Year

Amherst v Colby shouldn’t be much of a matchup but of course I’m interested. Look for Conn to go after Midd on saturday, expect a competitive meet.

@Colbybr wrote:

Amherst v Colby shouldn’t be much of a matchup but of course I’m interested. Look for Conn to go after Midd on saturday, expect a competitive meet.

The Colby-Amherst men’s meet will be pretty close. I think Colby might be poised for an upset. It was a pretty close meet last year.

I’m interested in seeing how fast Amhers’s Kendra Stern is swimming at the beginning of the season. She is one of the top D-III newcomers this year. It will also be interesting to see where Norsworthy and Sasser stand. Will they continue to dominate NESCAC women in their events in this their senior year? Will they do something special on the national scene? If, in this initial meet, Norsworthy is 1:06 in the 100 breast and Sasser is in the low 57’s in the 100 back, watch out! It sure has been fun to watch these two swim the past three years.

Good flattery Nescacfan, but Colby graduated a big class with Cross, Adams, Bartkiewicz, and Dean. They were few in number but they all fulfilled important roles. I can’t see the freshmen replacing their production in the lineup, and this Colby team will certainly be hurting in diving and breaststroke.

12:00 Wesleyan vs. Bates
1:00 Tufts vs. Trinity
2:00 Colby vs. Amherst
4:00 Middlybury vs. Conn College

Has anyone heard anything about the first three meets? They’ve all be under way for at least an hour and a half, and Wesleyan vs. Bates should be over with.

The results are on the athletics websites now.

(From the other NESCAC thread: “Dillon’s gone. Failed out of Middlebury” — Dillon swam as a sophomore in the Conn-Midd meet.)

FY Ryan Colby of Amherst broke the Colby pool record for the 1650 with a time of 16:45.89. FY Kendra Stern of Amherst broke 59 in the fly. I thought she was only a freestyler. It also looks like the Amherst women have picked up a good FY diver, Meggie Meisinger.

FY’s Middlebury sprinters Bob Divers and Jay Li performed well against Conn College as did Emily McDonald on the women’s side.

Looking forward to seeing the results of this afternoon’s Williams vs. Conn meet and tomorrow’s Amherst vs. Wesleyan meet.

Yeah. My first impressions:

Conn definitely picked up a decent freshmen class. In my mind they looked very much more impressive than the Amherst men did at Colby. Is Amherst missing some upperclassmen abroad?

Neither Bowdoin nor Bates, nor Colby look to have improved much. Wesleyan looks much better than they did last year after an off year. Didn’t notice that 15:50 miler that Midd is supposed to have.

the 15:55 miler at midd is still recovering from a broken wrist, he swam the 200free and the 400im

@fredshark89 wrote:

the 15:55 miler at midd is still recovering from a broken wrist, he swam the 200free and the 400im

the injured wrist thing seems to be going around the swimming community…

@Colbybr wrote:

Neither Bowdoin nor Bates, nor Colby look to have improved much.

I agree if you are just talking about the men, but the Bowdoin women seem much faster than last year to me, despite graduating their two nationals qualifiers. Their 200 medley already went about the same as last year’s NESCAC time with 3 freshman (and a fourth went faster than the senior on the relay).

The men . . . not so much

Good point polar bear. I was going crazy being man centric again. Its really sad to see the CBB like this. Hopefully Casares will be able to get some good talent into Bates, and Burnham and Burton can manage to recruit somebody, anybody for next years. All the schools seem to have years where absolutely nothing happened in recruiting (I know, I was in one of them) and its hard to figure out why.

There seems to be some movement for next year, but we will see what happens when admissions is done with all of it. Trust me, I know where you are coming from. I believe this is one of if not the hardest league to recruit in — you don’t have scholarships to dangle and everyone is looking at the same kids. A lot of coaches who come from the scholarship model have a hard time getting their recruiting system to work.

I was kind of curious though — I think classes seem to go in waves, as in any time we had a good class other schools also had a good class. Interest seems to be up from males — is that true for everyone else, i.e. is it going to be a good year for everyone?

Yeah I just feel like coaches, and this is not a problem local to the NESCAC, are afraid to go out of their way to get in contact with a lot of swimmers. They rely on people who fill out the questionnare online or know people currently or formerly on the team. This is valid in some ways, it can be a huge waste of time recruiting a random high school senior. However, I really think that coaches could have a lot more confidence in a school like Bowdoin, Bates or Colby or any NESCAC school. There is a lot to sell (a top liberal arts education).

The last few posts are interesting. My daughter is currently a senior in High School. She has been heavily recruited by a couple of NESCAC schools, yet no response at all from others. She even filled out recruiting forms for a couple of the schools that have not contacted her. She is someone who would qualify for finals with her current HS times and is qualified academically. I am thrilled with recruiting so far so this is not a sour grapes thing. I have had this conversation with other swim parents. We were surprised to see the disconnect in recruiting from the various schools. In the end all will be fine. I just wanted to mention (without mentioning schools) that the recruiting situation in NESCAC seems quite divergent.

I had an opportunity this year to see how much interest some of the coaches get, and its a lot. I think its very hard to sort through who is serious and who isnt, and who can get in, and some can fall through the cracks. In my experience some of the bigger teams (Midd especially) did a better job of farming out the recruiting to the kids and keeping on top of all the recruits. But people get into this job to coach, not to recruit, and I can see how it can get pushed aside a little.

@mwgdc wrote:

The last few posts are interesting. My daughter is currently a senior in High School. She has been heavily recruited by a couple of NESCAC schools, yet no response at all from others. She even filled out recruiting forms for a couple of the schools that have not contacted her. She is someone who would qualify for finals with her current HS times and is qualified academically. I am thrilled with recruiting so far so this is not a sour grapes thing. I have had this conversation with other swim parents. We were surprised to see the disconnect in recruiting from the various schools. In the end all will be fine. I just wanted to mention (without mentioning schools) that the recruiting situation in NESCAC seems quite divergent.

This seems to be not too uncommon of an experience. I believe possibly lower tier schools believe that they cannot compete with the upper tier nescac schools and so coaches are not even bothering to compete and attempt to sell their programs to your daughter. Its a shame since these schools have unique things to offer that possibly an Amherst, Williams do not have.