Hanover

When the Dartmouth men's and women's swimming and diving teams compete at the upcoming Ivy League Championships, neither squad will be under any victorious illusions. The men's program hasn’t beaten an Ancient Eight foe head-to-head in a dual meet during the last six seasons and the women's team has done it just three times in the same span.

“We set our goals differently than other teams, possibly,” said Jim Wilson, who has guided the Dartmouth men since 1993 and four years ago added the women's program to his responsibilities, joining four other Ivy swimming peers with dual-team duties. “Harvard and Princeton have won the league perpetually. Their goals could be to win the Ivies every year. Our goals are not that.

“We have individuals who compete for league titles, but our teams know that for us to win the Ivy championships, we will have to take some giant steps forward.”

Dartmouth, like Brown in men's competition and Cornell, Columbia and Pennsylvania on the women's side, has never won an Ivy League swimming title. Team titles were awarded for the men starting with the 1956-57 school year and for the women in 1976-77.

When it comes to individual or relay team titles at the Ivy championships, Dartmouth's swimming landscape is similarly bare. The women, whose league meet is this weekend at Harvard, have won two individual Ivy crowns in the past 12 seasons and captured their lone relay title in 1978. Dartmouth has had one winning league campaign and gone winless in the Ivies 15 times, most recently this winter.

“The No. 1 concern is providing a quality experience for student-athletes and we all know having a reasonable chance to be successful is part of that,” said Bob Ceplikas, Dartmouth's acting athletic director. “But I honestly believe we have some things in place now that give swimming a better chance for success than they've had for a long time.”

The Dartmouth men, whose league championship meet is March 4-6 at Princeton, haven't won an individual Ivy championship event since 1999 and only two since 1978, both by the same diver. The program last claimed an Ivy championship relay team in 1974 and its most recent winning league record was in 1981-82. The Big Green has failed to win an Ivy dual meet during 15 of the last 18 seasons.

Dartmouth's swimming and diving teams may be the college's least successful athletic programs. However, that beats the alternative of them not existing at all, which briefly came to pass earlier this decade. In December 2002, the athletic department eliminated both squads for budget reasons before alumni financial pledges resurrected them 45 days later.

That $2 million nest egg, named the John C. Glover Fund after a 1950s Big Green aquatic standout, has since supported the swimming and diving programs. Ceplikas estimates the fund will be exhausted midway through the 2012-13 season, but said last week there is no reason to think the college won't live up to its 2003 pledge to then resume financial support of the teams.

That may be the silver lining of what looks to be another lost season for the Dartmouth aquatics programs. Combined with some improved results and what Ceplikas and Wilson describe as an improved bond with the college's admissions office, the programs appear to finally be on the rise.

“I would hope that within a period of three or four years we could show improvement and continue after that,” said Wilson, whose combined dual-meet record at Dartmouth with the men's and women's teams is 55-190-1 and 17-129 in the Ivy League.

That timetable may seem lengthy, but Big Green swimming and diving has long lacked competitive depth compared to some Ivy rivals. Andrew Berry, a former captain who graduated in 2008, said it was a struggle to maintain optimism.

“It's very difficult to keep morale high when the freshmen compete in their first meet and the first heat dives into the water and the other team finishes 1-2-3-4 and Dartmouth comes in several lengths behind that,” said Berry, a diver who who earned second-team All-Ivy honors in 2008.

“The team's performance is indicative of the difference in ability between it and other (Ivy League) teams and its performance is far below where a college like Dartmouth should expect to perform.”

That was part of the reasoning used by Dartmouth when it announced more than seven years ago that the swimming programs would be eliminated. A college news release noted at the time that, “We have been unable to stay competitive in swimming, and believe that success could not be attained without a significant infusion of new resources,” including an estimated $20-25 million for a new pool.

The programs were reinstated, but have continued on with annual budgets increased only to cover coaches' raises and higher travel costs, Ceplikas said.

Karl Michael Pool, built in 1962 and described as “exceptional” on the Dartmouth athletics Web site, had its lighting, ventilation and surroundings redone as part of a $12 million Alumni Gym renovation in 2006, but its competition deck and lanes haven't been upgraded. The smaller and adjacent Spaulding Pool was built in 1919, but Ceplikas and Wilson said the overall facility is not the worst in the Ivy League.

“It's in the middle of the pack,” Wilson said, adding that Dartmouth's pool has more competition lanes than those at Columbia and Cornell. “We have a competition and a warm-down pool, which a couple of the Ivy facilities do not have,” he added.

If the facilities aren't a primary reason for Dartmouth's swimming woes, what are the main factors?

Ceplikas, Wilson and a number of former Big Green swimmers believe a formerly unpredictable relationship with the college's admissions office, coaching strategies that target the Ivy championships at the expense of dual meet results and the upheaval caused by the 2002-03 cuts are all to blame. Wilson declined to make his current athletes available for questions, citing the perceived distraction interviews would cause shortly before championship competition.

“If you want to find fault with the swim team, blame the admissions office,” former Dartmouth swimmer Scott Brown wrote in a letter to the college's student newspaper in 2007. “They are the ones denying admission to the top recruits every year, the same recruits who come back and beat us as a member of another Ivy League team a year later.”

Berry said he had similar experiences, and Wilson said he sometimes wondered whether staying at Dartmouth was worth the struggle to get prospects admitted. The coach said only two swimming recruits might be included in one year's freshman class, while the next might include nine or 10. Karl Furstenberg, Dartmouth's Dean of Admissions from 1990-2006, was viewed by some in the college’s athletic community as difficult to work with, especially after a 2004 controversy that revealed his disparaging views on the Big Green’s football program.

Ceplikas said admissions outcomes are “much more predictable now,” not just for swimming and diving, but for all of Dartmouth's athletic programs.

“It's still a very high standard, but at least now, the admissions office is willing to give really helpful feedback on prospects much earlier in the process,” he said. “So our coaches can really focus time and energy and resources on the ones with the highest chance for admission.”

When it comes to Dartmouth's abysmal record in Ivy dual meets, Wilson and some former swimmers cite his philosophy of training competitors so they'll swim their best times at the season-ending Ivy championships. The coach explained that in order to give swimmers the best possible chance in dual meets from November through February, he'd have to incorporate rest periods that would throw off their long-term training goals.

Although the Ivy League keeps regular-season standings based on dual-meet records, its official league championship is awarded to the team that scores the most points in the league championship meet. That event, similar to a conference's season-ending basketball tournament, is the one at which Wilson aims.

“We put more emphasis on the championship meet because that determines the final Ivy standings. We also start school very late in September and it's hard to get lots of training time in early, then take time off” to rest for dual meets, Wilson said. “Whether you're 7-0 or 0-7, none of that matters for the final Ivy standings.”

Dartmouth's men have finished last at the past seven Ivy League championship meets and the women have finished last three times and next-to-last six times at the league championship meet since 2000. On the eve of the 2008 league championship meet, an Ivy news release noted that Princeton's women had gone “a perfect 7-0 in league dual meets to earn the coveted regular-season championship” and that the Tigers were presented with that trophy on the championship meet's first night.

Berry said some swimmers disagreed with Wilson's philosophy and that it contributed to an attrition rate that sometimes saw two-thirds of a recruiting class eventually quit.

“The complaints were geared toward the training being too heavily focused toward the end of the season,” said Berry, who never experienced a dual meet victory at Dartmouth. “Who knows if changing the training would change the outcome of Ivy meets, but when you're so worn down and swim slower than you're capable of, it doesn’t feel good.”

However, Yale Fillingham, a 2006 Dartmouth graduate and freestyle competitor who turned down a swimming scholarship from the University of Illinois-Chicago, said he agreed with Wilson's approach.

“What defined success for me was how much my times improved, not how many wins we racked up,” Fillingham said. “If someone set a school record, that was our success.”

One thing on which nearly everyone agrees is that Dartmouth swimming's brief elimination wreaked havoc on the program, even after the reinstatement. That year's prospects, including those who had already gained early admission to the college, went elsewhere. Wilson did his best to play catch-up on the recruiting trail once the programs were saved, but the Big Green essentially lost a recruiting class and suffered competitively.

“That was a tough blow to recover from,” said Wilson, estimating that only one or two in 10 recruits now brings up the question of Dartmouth swimming's long-term stability. “Are we still feeling the effects? Yes, but it's not as bad, and we’re definitely over the hump.”

Indications include sophomore diver Erica Serpico and freshman swimmer Albert Roth, each among the best in the Northeast this season. In addition, since 2005 Dartmouth's men have posted 33 individual times and eight relay team results fast enough to join the program's top 10 career lists in those events. Dartmouth’s women have set program records in six individual events and three relay events in the last year, and both programs are annual contenders for the highest cumulative grade-point average among NCAA Division I swimming teams.

Even discounting the faster times and strong academics, Wilson and former swimmers believe Dartmouth swimming deserves to be supported regardless of its competitive success. Wilson points out that the college has had teams in the sport since 1920 and speaks glowingly of his athletes' dedication and character. Berry said it taught him how to fight through adversity and how to lead, and former women's captain Mia Yocco Coffing said winning and losing was only a small part of her experience.

“I don't even remember our win-loss record or specific meets,” said Yocco Coffing, a 2003 Dartmouth graduate. “It's a whole big picture that I've always looked back on fondly. It’s college athletics, and as cheesy and sappy as it sounds, it’s for the beauty of the sport and I feel so lucky to have experienced that.”

Said Fillingham: “We weren't an Ivy powerhouse, but what really mattered to me was the camaraderie and friends I was going to walk away with. Winning (as a team) didn't matter nearly as much to me by the time I got to my junior and senior years.”

Still, Dartmouth swimmers would be happier with a few victories here and there. Berry believes making such headway is crucial if the college is to attract the kind of aquatic athletes necessary to make the teams consistent winners. He took in the Big Green's dual meet at Columbia earlier this month and came away cautiously encouraged.

“The freshman class is fast and it's exciting to see, but I can't tell you how many times I’ve heard that we're on the way up and then seen the same pattern of lost morale and attrition and the same outcomes,” he said.

“People want to swim for strong programs. They don't want to swim for weak ones.”

Tris Wykes can be reached at twykes@vnews.com or (603) 727-3227.