“I think I swam well” was the comment echoed across the board by Varsity Blues swimmers as both the men and women enjoyed victories over the McMaster Marauders on Friday. The competition was not as strong as the McMaster head coach would probably have liked as the U of T women beat the Mac team 167–122 and the men blew them out of the water with a score of 181-107.

Much of the team’s success can be attributed to the swimmers of the meet as chosen by the McMaster coaches: Julie Gravelle and Peter Szaflarski. Although not the winningest woman on the team, having won the 400m freestyle and the 400m Individual Medley races, Julie Gravelle received the female swimmer of the meet award. This, explained Varsity head coach Byron MacDonald, is probably because Julie managed to beat the 400m freestyle record of “one of the greatest superstars of all time,” MacMaster’s Joanne Malar.

Along with Julie Gravelle swam an impressive string of women. Jennifer Button, a veteran of the 2000 Canadian Olympics, won all three of her events, the 50m fly, 100m fly, and 200m fly, and set meet records in two of them (50 and 100m events). Meanwhile, Liz Warden set another new meet record in the 100 backstroke, and also took home the gold in the 200m back and 200m Individual Medley events. “I was really impressed with my speed,” said Warden, “and I am looking to come up with some faster times at the Ontario and Canadian University championships.”

Rookie Iris Elliot proved that she is ready to go far by setting a new meet record in the 100m freestyle event, and winning the 50m freestyle and 100m freestyle races. In addition, Rebecca Applebaum set a meet record in the 50m breaststroke race and won the 200m breast and 100m breaststroke races. Pamela Tung also took home gold in the 50m backstroke race to round out the women’s successes.

On the men’s side, Peter Szaflarski managed the impressive feat of not only winning, but also setting records in all of his events: the 100m, 200m and 400m freestyle events.

“I know I don’t have much experience with the big competitions,” stated Szaflarski about his night. “These were very good times for me in-season. I’m looking forward to OUAs [Ontario University Finals], which should be really fun.”

Greatly contributing to Szaflarski’s achievements was rookie Chris Keung, who set a meet record in the 50m breaststroke race and won the 200m and 100m breast stroke events as well.

Another up and coming rookie, Anthony Costa, also swam well, winning the 100m back stroke race.

In addition, the team’s other veteran star, Nick Dargus, performed solidly, winning the 100m and 50m butterfly events, and the 200m Individual Medley race. Other men’s winners were Lawrence Cohen, who won the 200m butterfly, and Dave Ling, who won the 400m Individual Medley race.

“The young guys, Chris Keung, Anthony Costa, Scott Briggs, Scott Ling, these are going to be guys who are going to be carrying us for 3-4 years,” said coach Byron MacDonald about the team’s youth.

“We have a great chance at winning at the Ontario finals. However, at this point, our goals for the Canadian finals are different. On the women’s side, we are hoping just to scare the top teams and come in at third place.”

“On the men’s side we’ll probably come in around fifth, which is not great. We don’t really like not breaking into the top three—we’ve only done it once in history—but we’ll have to settle for that now.”