The William and Mary men's swimming team made all sorts of history on Saturday, downing East Carolina on Senior Day 166-96.  The first win over the Pirates since 1998-99 pushed the Tribe's season record to 7-2 overall, while ECU fell to 5-2 on the year.

Complete Results

W&M won nine of the 14 events on the day, while also setting a pair of dual-meet records and a pool record.  The winning started early, with a 200 medley relay team that swam 1:32.13 to tie last week's squad for the 12th-fastest time in school history.  The quartet today included Will Manion (Haddonfield, N.J.), senior Chris Dong (Chapel Hill, N.C.), Justin Barden (Gordonsville, Va.), and senior Taegan Clarke (Chappaqua, N.Y.).

O'Donnell was back at it in the 200 free, coming from lane seven to take the win and the pool record in a lifetime-best 1:40.77.  It broke the mark of 1:41 flat set by teammate Billy Russell (Newport News, Va.) last October.  Manion followed up immediately with a 49.38 win in the 100 back, and then freshman Evan Baker (Chantilly, Va.) broke his own dual-meet record with a 1:52.12 win in the 200 fly.

Rookie Kyle Neri (Wallingford, Conn.) kept the winning going with a double win on either side of the intermission, winning the 50 free in 21.36 and coming back to take the 100 free in 46.66.  Manion got his second win with a 1:48.77 in the 200 back, and then came the 200 breast.  While the Tribe didn't win over NCAA participant Rokas Cepulis, O'Donnell's second-place 2:04.47 was below the existing pool record for the second time in the afternoon.

The defending CAA Champion Barden show his form in the 100 fly, winning in 50.95 to send the meet into the second intermission.  The 200 IM was nearly a mirror-image of the 200 breast, with ECU's Cepulis once again breaking the pool record and Manion joining him under the facility record in second place.  Manion's time of 1:51.76 was also a Tribe dual-meet record, besting the mark set by O'Donnell last fall at the CAA Pod Meet.  Finishing the afternoon was the 400 free relay, which W&M won in 3:06.15 thanks to the efforts of Russell, Clarke, Baker, and sophomore Joe Eiden (White Plains, N.Y.).

The victory day was historic for a number of reasons.  In addition to being the first win over ECU since 1998-99, today's win was the 100th of head coach Matt Crispino's '02 eight-year run at the helm of his alma mater.  He is just the second coach in school history to reach the century mark, joining longtime men's coach Dudley Jensen who won 170 meets in 33 years from the 1950s to the 1980s.  W&M's season record of 7-2 is just the eighth year since 1945 that the Tribe has lost two or fewer meets in the year, and with last year's identical mark these are the first back-to-back seasons of two or fewer losses since three in a row from 1968-71.

The senior class - Dong, Clarke, Matt Goetz (Chappaqua, N.Y.), and Carter Head (Lynchburg, Va.) - has led W&M to a 25-12 (.676) record over the last four years, the best winning percentage since the class of 1973 and the first class since 1971 to string together four consecutive winning seasons.  Along with the women's team, the combined winning percentage of 62.4% (53-32) is the best for W&M since 1974-75.

With the regular season complete, William and Mary now turns its attention to the year-end invitationals.  Next weekend finds the Tribe in Chapel Hill, N.C., for the UNC College Cup, its final tune-up before the CAA Championships at the end of February.