Yale aquatics focus on the big prize

By Will Marldin

Frank Keefe has grown accustomed to championships. In the past five years, his women's swimming squad has been crowned with the Ivy League title four times. In the '90s, the women have a 72-9 dual meet record. Meanwhile, the men have gone 69-22 and have captured one Eastern Independent Swimming League (EISL) crown. With that kind of recent success, expectations are always at their highest.

Julia Tiernan/YH The women's squad is off to a disappointing start, but because of new league rules, they are still in the hunt for an Ivy League title.

This season, while the men are off to their usual strong start, the women are going through their roughest winter in years. With disappointing losses to Villanova, Harvard, and Princeton, the women are now 4-3 (2-2 Ivy) and are not in their familiar invincible form as they approach the Ivy League Championships. But Keefe's encouragement has kept them optimistic throughout this tough start to the season. "He's really inspirational," diver Michelle Sleater, DC '99, said.

Even with his 18 years of experience, this may be Keefe's most challenging season. He coached two Olympic teams in the '80s and has emerged as an internationally recognized instructor in the sport. "He was deemed to be one of the top three coaches in the world when he was in the Olympics. It's really an opportunity to swim for him," Michael Boyle, CC '00, said.

Despite his high status within the swimming community, Keefe can be very demanding as a coach. "Satisfaction is not one of my traits--I'm never really satisfied until the end of the season," Keefe said. Keefe hopes that at the end of this season, both the men's and the women's teams will have reached their potential--taking the Ivy crown.

Luckily, the rules for determining Ivy Champions have changed. In recent years, the squad with the best regular season record was crowned with the league title; starting this year, the championship will be determined in a single weekend, at the Ivy Championship meet.

This final meet gives the Yale women a shot at ending the season with a league title. In any past season, the squad would already be all but eliminated from league title contention. Keefe understands that the team must be in top form to challenge for the Ivy title. "To be a champion, you have to be able to perform at the time and in the place where the championship is decided," he said.

In order to be in championship form when the season is decided, training becomes paramount. Consistent work through the offseason has always been important for the swimmers and divers. But even when their schedules get hectic in December, Keefe still requires discipline from his athletes. "Our solution is to have our kids be in the water for one hour a day," he said.

Like the women, the men's squad is looking toward the end of the season; but instead of salvaging the season, the men are looking for payback. The team placed fourth last year in their final meet, the Eastern Championships, behind Harvard, Princeton, and Navy. It was a very disappointing way to end the season. "Last year, we went in hoping to win," Boyle said. Although he feels he personally hasn't performed to his potential, he is pleased about how the team has been doing. He said, "I'd rather see our group succeed than me succeed individually."

Though swimmers may set high standards for themselves and compete fiercely against each other, they come together as a team before such big final meets. This is when knowing how to "shave and taper" becomes important. Boyle said that shaving is useful because, in addition to removing that last little bit of hair, it removes a layer of dead skin, helping the swimmer to "feel" the water better.

Such details could prove to be the difference between a championship season and a disappointing one. Male team members will shave their legs before the climax of the season, the Easterns, held at the end of February.

According to Keefe, tapering, a decrease in workout intensity, is important because it "moves the team from `heavy distance mode' to `sprint mode.' Instead of swimming ten 200-yard pieces, a swimmer might do five in preparation for a big meet. It's all about more rest in between quality sets." Kate Ivers, BK '99, swims middle-distance freestyle. "We've been focusing on the Ivy Championships as our big shave-and-taper meet," she said. "I'm looking forward to shaving and tapering." This weekend, both the men and the women will be swimming and diving against Dartmouth and Pennsylvania on Sat., Jan. 31, in a tri-meet. "It's tough for our men to beat Penn," Keefe said. "The kids that are seniors have been through it. They know what to expect."

The women's team is preparing for their own meet with Dartmouth and Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, an important meet in the road to the league showdown.

Keefe explained that the team must focus on placing in as many events as possible in order to succeed in the championships. Last year, the men's squad placed in 33 out of the 57 possible spots. The winner, Brown, placed in 44. "The fact that Brown placed 11 more times is significant," Keefe said. Keefe added that having each swimmer place in three events is key to winning the championship. Each school is only allowed to bring 18 swimmers (each diver counts as one third of a swimmer) to the championships. Keefe said that being chosen to go to the championships is a highly competitive process.

The men's 7-1 record is certainly impressive. Still, they have yet to enter their most difficult stretch in their schedule. In addition to Dartmouth, Pennsylvania, and Brown, they have yet to face such teams as Harvard and Princeton before the Eastern Championships. They look for strong leadership under their captain David Antonelli, CC '98, a top swimmer in the short freestyle and breaststroke events. Though John Barbie, DC '98, spent the fall of 1997 studying abroad in Australia, he should finish his Yale swimming career impressively in the 200-yard backstroke and individual medley. Classmate Jason Wyland, TC '98, a diver, had a superb performance against Seton Hall, winning both the 1- and 3-meter diving events, and is expected to continue his success.

Keefe is hoping that for both teams, everything will fall into place so that the squads can make a strong run at titles. He has been down this road before, and knows what it takes to be a champion.

But in the end, he said, it comes down to the will of each individual. "It's a great learning process. If you know you've taken responsibility for yourself, you're a champion within yourself," Keefe said. "If you can be the best that you can be, that's the most important thing."

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