Thanks to two tremendous efforts from relay teams and stellar individual performances from freshman Mike Dominski and sophomore Goksu Bicer, the men's swimming and diving team passed Cornell to move into 5th at the Ivy League Championships after two of three days of competition in Princeton.
Yale started the day off with a bang, taking third in the 200-yard medley relay. The team of Dominski, Steen, Bicer, and Veatch finished the event in 1:30.71 to edge Brown's squad by two-tenths of a second. Topping that performance was a second place finish in the 800-yard freestyle relay - a finish that earned the team of familiar faces Bicer, Veatch, Dominski and junior Lugar Choi second-team All-Ivy honors.
Bicer and Dominski also led the way for the Bulldogs individually Friday, as Dominski edged Bicer by just .25 seconds to finish second overall- and therefore earn second team All-Ivy honors - in the 100 yard butterfly. Dominski swam the race in 48.45, while Bicer touched out at 48.70, good for third overall.
Dominski, competing in his first Ivy League Championship meet, delivered again in the 100-yard backstroke, finishing fifth in the conference with a finals time of 49.63 seconds. Captain Tom Robinson won the B final in a time of 49.55; had he qualified for the A final, that time would have edged not only Dominski, but five of the other swimmers in the heat, and given him 5th overall.
Also coming up big for the Elis was junior Matt Lee, who took 5th overall in the grueling 1650-yard freestyle. Freshman Jared Lovett qualified for the A heat in the 400 yard IM, turning in a finals time of 4:00.81. Choi also delivered a top-ten performance, taking tenth overall in the 200 yard freestyle (1:40.00).
The Bulldogs will look to make a push up the leaderboard when action concludes Saturday night. They currently sit just 48 points behind Columbia, and 50 behind Penn's Quakers with an overall score of 606.5 Princeton leads the meet, amassing an impressive 1027.5. Harvard is second with 859.5 points.
Report Filed by Chelsea Janes, Yale Sports Publicity.