In the first meet of 2014 on Saturday, the men's and women's swimming and diving teams hosted the Trinity College Bantams at the pool in the Joseph M. Linsey Sports Center. Although the Judges shined on the individual level with several victories from Brian Luk '16 and Max Fabian '15, they failed to pull off the overall win.

With an eight-man team, the men only lost by 33 points (139-106) to Trinity's squad of 17 swimmers. Their female counterparts, likewise, lost 138-71 to the Bantams.

Joanna Murphy '17 led the way for the Judges, garnering two wins on the afternoon. She surged past the competition in the 1000-yard freestyle with a time of 10 minutes and 50.78 seconds, touching the wall 22 seconds ahead of the second-place competitor.

In addition to her victory in the 1000-yard freestyle, Murphy eked out a victory in the 200-yard freestyle in 2:02.02-slimly taking first by 15 hundredths of a second.

Luk spoke fondly of Murphy as one of the newest, and brightest, additions to the team.

"I think she did an amazing job as she swam in almost all of the events and won a number of them," he commented.

"Moreover, her attitude toward swimming more events than usual is very positive. We are very proud of her performance, and glad to have her as a teammate."

Fabian continued his strong start to the season, winning in both the 1,000 and 500-yard freestyle races. He clinched a victory in both races over Trinity freshman Tom McNamara, finishing the 1,000-yard freestyle in 10:08.46 and the 500-yard freestyle in 5:03.33.

Fabian out-swam McNamara by 39 seconds in the 1,000-yard freestyle and established a 10-second lead in the 500-yard freestyle.

Luk, who seemed to thrive with the support of a home crowd, won all three events in which he participated, including the 50-yard freestyle, 100-yard freestyle and 200-yard freestyle.
"I think the atmosphere was amazing," he explained. "Competing at home feels great as we are familiar with the pool, specifically the walls and blocks."

In addition to impressively picking up three victories, Luk out-paced the competition by at least 1.5 seconds in all of his events.

Luk won the 50-yard freestyle race in 22.46 seconds, the 100-yard freestyle in 48.71 seconds and the 200-yard freestyle in 1:49.06.

Edan Zitelny '17 impressed the competition by finishing first in the men's 200-yard backstroke. Zitelny clinched the victory by a slim margin of only .48 seconds over the second-place finisher.

As both the men's and women's teams begin to prepare for the finale in this swimming season-the University Athletic Association Championships hosted by Emory University in Atlanta in February-Luk noted the team is focusing on improving and attaining a long sought-after goal.

"The team's ultimate goal is doing well [at] the UAA championship meet," he stated.

He additionally said that Saturday's meet against the Bantams proved to be another solid step toward team-wide success at the upcoming Championships.

"[It's] great to get our minds to racing and preparing for the big meet later," he added.

Both teams will jump back in the pool in the Joseph M. Linsey Sports Center after a two-week hiatus to host local rival Clark University on Feb. 1 at 1 p.m.
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