There are a few Denison grads (as much as anyone who gets a diploma by mail-order can be a graduate) and Kenyon grads on the board, so I thought that Kenyon’s 30th straight DIII national swimming championship this past weekend was worth a mention, especially since Denison thought that they had a shot. Silly Big Red.
FWIW, I think that even more amazing than 30 straight championships is that a Kenyon swimmer has won the 1650 for 19 straight years. That seems unbelieveable to me.
FWIW x 2, I had the fortune to swim for Kenyon some 20+ years ago, and the DIII times now are getting ridiculously fast. Don’t know if it was the suits, the advancement in training, the changes to the rules, but basically every record has been shattered in the past few years, and most of them at times that would do very well in DI not too long ago.
I was timing prelims the first 2 days and have a friend who was a captain when he swam at Kenyon…it was pretty impressive and pretty dominant. And on a tri-related note, Kenyon was wearing blue seventy suits…
Kenyon’s achievements in swimming are unbelievably impressive. I can’t think of any college or university with such an impressive resume of dominance in any sport.
I swam for St. Olaf and was glad to see them do well - 4th place. We also won coach of the year honors for Dave and Bob Hauck - two great coaches.
Kenyon’s record at nationals is much better than their conference record (Denison beat Kenyon at their conference meet a few times during the 30 year streak). But its no wonder - since Kenyon probably isn’t even shaved and tapered for the conference meet, unlike all other teams in D3.
Actually, there is another Ohio school with similar dominance - Mt. Union outside Canton. Their football achievements are equally as ridiculous and dominant, yet coach Kehres won’t leave either.
Kenyon 04 grad here, couldn’t be prouder of the team and Coach Steen. I am nowhere near fish enough to have been on the team, but I love bragging about them.
Huge Kudos to Coach Steen and his men’s and women’s squads! It’s disgusting to me that this is not mentioned on ESPN (yet again). I did not swim in college, but I had the utmost respect for our Lords and Ladies; noone worked harder during the season and partied harder during the offseason.
When I go back to Kenyon (not as often as I should), I take the (slightly) longer way around, taking I-70 to 661, so that I can drive through Granville, roll down the window, and shout F#@e YOU, BIG RED!" as I drive by the Denison campus.
Congrats to those of you who have worked under Coach Steen during this amazing streak.
Ethan Crosby, '97
I swam against Kenyon in the early years of the streak, which I think were the most impressive.
Back then Kenyon swam in an old, decrepit, glass-covered pool (like a greenhouse, but cold during the winter!). The pool was so narrow that they must have converted the pool to 4 or 5 lanes for practice. For meets (with 6 lanes), the lanes were so skinny that I could swim fly almost touching the lane lines on both sides! I enjoyed swimming backstroke there since I could enjoy watching the snow-covered trees while getting destroyed by the Kenyon swimmers! ;( Jim Steen must have been an incredible recruiter to get swimmers to go there! Fortunately they got a nice new pool in the mid 80s.
FWIW, Kenyon (no scholarships) regularly swims against and beats DI schools. I remember watching DI nationals some 27 years ago and was proud of the Kenyon swimmer or two who held his own there, a week or two after peaking for DIII nationals.
Denison’s coach, Greg Parini, was a national champìon DIII swimmer in the 80s, when he swam for Jim Steen at Kenyon. It’d be nice to see him knock off Kenyon one day, but it ain’t gonna happen!
I also want to add that this DIII swimming isn’t about scholarships (not that DI swimming is, either) or any of the other bs that plagues college athletics. This is pure athletics. People do this because they love it. For everyone into triathlon where the real benefits are not monetary, something like the ongoing battle between Kenyon and Dennison/everyone is a fantastic story.
I’ve also met both coaches and I liked them both a lot. The Denison coach is really a fun guy.
Great point. One other interesting note is that Emory’s coach, Jon Howell, is also a Kenyon grad/former swimmer, and quite the speedster in his day. While I can never see Denison knocking off Kenyon, simply based on the “where would you like to spend 4 years” factor, Emory could one day do it.
To bad UCSD has never put together teams like they did in the 70s & 80s. I would think from simple recruitment/quality of life, that 4 years on a hill (and they are really on a tall hill) in SoCal would be much more attractive than 4 years in mid-Ohio.
FWIW x 2, I had the fortune to swim for Kenyon some 20+ years ago, and the DIII times now are getting ridiculously fast. Don’t know if it was the suits, the advancement in training, the changes to the rules, but basically every record has been shattered in the past few years, and most of them at times that would do very well in DI not too long ago.
I think a lot of it has to do with all of the men’s programs that have been cut. There just aren’t nearly the number of opportunities for guys to swim in college that there once were, so the talent trickles down to D2 and D3.
Would make sense for me that the best DivIII team should move to DivII and the weakest DivII team move down but that’s obviously not how it works.
There is no relegation system for performance on the field/court/in the pool for American college sports. Each school decides how it wants to treat college sports. If they want to spend a lot of money (I think that the athletics budget at many SEC/Big Ten/Pac 10 schools is larger than the GDP of some small countries) then they compete at the Division 1 level. If they want to spend less but still offer some athletic scholarships, they compete as Division 2. If the school doesn’t want to offer athletic scholarships, either for budgetary reasons or because they philosphically feel like it produces a more well-rounded student athlete, then they self-classify as Division 3.
To complicate things, a D2 or D3 school is allowed to field one team per gender that competes at the D1 level, complete with D1 athletic scholarship numbers, but it cannot be football, basketball, or baseball/softball. (Most common to see this with ice hockey)
In terms of competition quality, there’s usually no effective difference between D2 and D3 schools, and a good D2 or D3 school in a sport can often beat a weaker D1 team in that sport.
I swam and did a little discus for an average D3 school and I competed against lower level D1, D2, D3, NAIA (similar to D2/D3 but run by a different organization) and junior college athletes at different meets. The key on who we competed against wasn’t so much what classification the other school was but how much travel time was involved. We wouldn’t go up against Michigan or Michigan State because the Big Ten schools were on a whole different performance level, but anyone else was fair game.