28 straight championships

Yeah...Kenyon's s treak is pretty amazing.

(but the races are in yards, not meters).

Yea, but we (Oberlin College) beat the crap out of you (Kenyon) in soccer back in when I was in Ohio.

haygosl - 2007-03-26 8:53 PM Come race against my Auburn Tigers... little DIII. don't worry, they won't drown you right away.

No scholarships in DIII, tiger boy.  

Wow!  I knew that Kenyon was still winning, but had no idea that Coach Steen was still around!  He must be getting close to retirement by now...

I had the pleasure of swimming against (more like behind!) Kenyon swimmers when they started the streak (I went to Oberlin).  

One year, in a feable attempt to slow them down, we played mellow Ravi Shankar sitar music (rather than the usual rock and roll) on underwater speakers during the pre-meet warm-up.  I think it pissed them off more than slowed them down, as the promply destroyed us... 

Another year they came in early to Oberlin for a Saturday morning meet, did a 5 or 6k workout, then proceeded to beat us.  The next year our coach also had us workout just before the meet against Kenyon since, if we had no chance of winning, might as well get in a good workout before losing! 

Kenyon was especially impressive back then because they swam in an old glass-walled and glass-roofed pool with skinny lanes.  Swimming backstroke was great since you could enjoy the outdoor scenery, but fly was bad for the guys with long wingspans.  Even with a lousy pool, high academic standards, and no scholarships they were able to recruit some great DIII swimmers.  I think they built the new pool (now old) around 1983.

Back then a few of their swimmers would qualify for DI nationals (probably many do now), and one even won the World University Games in the 50 or 100 free.  Impressive for high achieving (academically) kids at a school not offereing athletic scholarships!

A great swimming tradition at Kenyon!

I guess nobody else cares very much if they let you guys continue to win the championship for decades.

Well it was a joke, sorry that you did not find it amusing. Perhaps you should have yourself checked to see if you are a candidate for a sense-of-humor implant. (Used the sarc font that time just to make sure you caught it.)

Interestingly though, in answer to your rhetorical question, my (high school) alma mater has dominated Ohio high school boys swimming since 1970, winning 29 state championships including the most recent 9 and has not finished lower than 2nd since 1989. And they don't give athletic scholarships. That has nothing to do with your original topic, but since you did ask...

Probably some of those guys have gone on to help continue the swimming dominance of Kenyon.

Peace.

Indian River competes in the NJCAA, but their streak is not as impressive because of the way NJCAA programs have been decimated in the past 10 or more years. I swam for the last program at Daytona Beach Community College, and actually we were the last team to beat them, but that was more than 20 years ago. At this year's meet, only 15 teams took part in a meet which now has no time standards. Only a few of those offer scholarships. IRCC still has quality swimmers, but in the 23 years since I swam at DBCC as a freshman, there's been no real improvement in quality of the meet at the top level, and there's nowhere near the depth that there used to be.

Case in point: my freshman year I was 4th in the 500 free at Nationals with a 4:41.That's 3 seconds faster than the 4th place time this year.In the 1650, I went 16:45 for 5th. 5th this year was 17:24. In the 400 Im I went 4:15 for 6th. 6th this year was 10 seconds slower.

Never!

It is quite the dominant record for Kenyon, BTW.