WILLIAMSTOWN – The Tufts University men's swimming & diving team won the 200 medley relay and the 1,000 freestyle to open Saturday night's finals session at the 2020 NESCAC Championships hosted by Williams College.
In the 200 medley relay which started the finals, the foursome of sophomore Nate Tingen, senior Matt Manfre, senior co-captain Costa Camerano and senior Roger Gu won with a 1:28.12 to set a new meet, school and pool record. Their time broke the old NESCAC Championships record of 1:29.05 set by Williams College in 2015. Tufts' time today was an NCAA B cut, and won the Jumbos their second straight 200 medley relay crown at the conference meet. Manfre, Camerano and Gu were a part of last year's victory as well. The second Jumbo 200 medley relay also swam an NCAA time on Saturday night as freshman Joshua Balbi, freshman Luke Isayiw, junior JJ Batt and freshman Peter LaBarge put together a 1:30.25 for 12th place.
The next event in the pool Saturday night was the 1,000 freestyle and Tufts junior John LaLime won it with a 9:22.89, breaking his own school record from last year (9:24.71) and also establishing a new Samuelson-Muir Pool record. Tufts freshman Evan Szablewski was also under the former Tufts record with his 9:24.39 mark for third place in the race.
Tufts remains in second place as a team at the meet with a 1,254.5 score. They are behind host Williams College (1,432.5). Amherst (963.4), Bates (722) and Colby (688.5) round out the top five.
Camerano led Tufts' strong scoring performance in the 100 butterfly, where they had four finish among the top 12. He was second in 49.23 seconds for an NCAA B cut. Balbi was fourth (49.39), followed by Batt in sixth (49.81) and junior Lomax Turner (50.46) 12th. Tufts scored similarly in the 200 freestyle, led by junior Tyler Tatro in third place (1:40.62). Gu was sixth in the final (1:41.23), LaBarge was ninth (1:41.37) and junior John Koster was 11th (1:42.28). Gu had notched an NCAA B mark of 1:39.86 in the preliminaries Saturday morning.
The Jumbos had another runner-up effort in the 100 backstroke where Tingen swam a time of 49.38 seconds. His 49.13 in the prelims will serve as his NCAA B time. Balbi was fourth in the final with a 50.01 mark. Junior Nathan Mitchell made it three in the top 10 with his 50.84. Manfre led three Jumbos in the top 10 of the 100 breaststroke as well. His 56.80 was fourth, while junior Tar Tar Jarusinchai touched in 56.91 for ninth place and Isayiw was 10th at 57.37 seconds.
Sophomore Michael Gregorace scored seventh-place points for Tufts in the 400 individual medley with a 4:04.51 finals time.
Through Saturday's events, the Tufts men have won four conference titles, posted 13 top-three (All-Conference) finishes overall, broken four school records and earned 11 NCAA B cuts.
The final day of the meet on Sunday starts with preliminaries at 10:00 am and finals beginning at 5:30 pm.
