For the seniors on the men's swim team, this season has been worth the wait.
After three years of tough losses and sub-.500 seasons, the four-year members of the team finally finished a season with a winning record after defeating Georgia Tech Saturday afternoon.
"It's been a phenomenal season with a great ending to it," senior Nate Goldstein said. "Going out on a winning note really means a lot to us."
"It feels great," senior Al Hadley said. "It's the first time in over four years that we've done that, so we were real glad we could do it in our last year."
The Blue Devils defeated the Yellow Jackets 140-91 to cap a four-meet winning streak to end the season. Duke, now 6-5 overall, finished the year 2-2 in the Atlantic Coast Conference to top last year's mark of 2-7 (0-3 ACC).
"Compared to where we were last year, we have come a long way," head coach Bob Thompson said. "We had an exceptional year this year. A lot of it has to do with a good freshman class, but an awful lot has to do with a bunch of other people stepping up and doing much better than they did last year."
A quartet of freshman swimmers set the tone for the meet in the first event of the day with an impressive performance in the 200-meter medley relay. Freshmen Shawn Kocha, Matt Lawrence, Paul Bamert and Sean Cassels combined to win the relay in 1:38.82, nearly three seconds faster than their closest competitors.
And then freshman Will Creighton may have ended any hope Georgia Tech had of winning the meet when he won the 100-meter backstroke midway through the contest.
Sophomore Peter Mackrill, the lone diver on the Duke swimming squad, performed well, splitting a pair of dives with his Georgia Tech opponents.
"We think that Peter is a very capable diver," Thompson said. "We think that he'll have more recognition this year and will be able to score better because of it [at the ACC Championships]."
But sophomore Chris Bollinger was the real star of the day. Bollinger, who capped off a solid year with victories against Georgia Tech in both the 50- and 100-meter freestyles, ended the dual-meet season undefeated in the 50-meter freestyle.
"I haven't been swimming that relatively fast this year, but I've been getting the job done," Bollinger said. "I'm looking forward to swimming real fast in the ACCs and maybe finishing in the top three."
Bollinger's performance, in addition to the rest of the team's swimming, has helped raise the Blue Devils out of the ACC cellar and gives them a realistic shot of making an impact at the ACC Championships in two weeks.
"We should fare real well, especially coming off such a strong end to the season," Goldstein said. "We should have our best showing there in quite some time."
"On the whole we swam pretty well," Hadley said. "We're getting ready for ACCs right now so we weren't that focused on Georgia Tech but we still came in and won."
Going into the ACC Championships, Duke has a chance to improve on last year's eighth-place finish.
"We have some outstanding male swimmers," Thompson said. "We just need to put it together at the end."
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