February 4, 2008

Bryant women swim to perfect 12-0 record in 2007-08 season

SMITHFIELD, RI - Perfect. It's a word to define a season - a season that defines a program.

It's not football or basketball or any other sport that needs its bleachers to be filled with cheering fans to find the motivation to win - to go 12-0. All these women need are their coaches, their male counterparts - whose 10-1 season is a story in its own right - and each other.

This is the life of the undefeated Bryant University women's swim team. Coach Katie Cameron's girls are young and were, for the most part, untested. Their leader is just a sophomore - there are no upperclassmen to relax young nerves or lend years of experience.

SOPHOMORE JESS LOONEY

So led by second-year standout Jess Looney (Goffstown, NH), the Bulldog women, made up of 11 sophomores and six freshmen, will toast their perfect season and celebrate their accomplishments with apple cider and diet coke.

But in a program that is in just its third year - a program that is about to make the jump from Division II to Division I - these women never showed their age.

And it all starts with Looney. The sophomore has taken home 26 individual first-place finishes in the 2007-08 campaign, also pairing up with different teammates for six top relay times on the year.

Looney owns nine Bryant school records by herself - in the 200-yard, 500-yard, 1000-yard and 1650-yard freestyles, the 200-yard backstroke, the 50-yard and 200-yard breaststroke, and the 100-yard, 200-yard and 400-yard individual medleys - and swam the leadoff leg of the record-holding 800-yard freestyle relay, 200-yard medley relay and 400-yard medley relay.

At the Northeast-10 Conference Championships back on Nov. 30 through Dec. 2, she, among other top-5 finishes, took home second place in the 400-yard IM in a time of 4:39.17, making the national "B" cut. She has been named the NE-10 Swimmer of the Week on three occasions.

But the freshmen are bearing their share of the load as well. Just look at rookie Jill Squillante (Sayville, NY), who with 19 individual event wins and 10 relay wins has led an impressively strong freshman class this season.

Squillante owns a few school records of her own - in the 50-yard and 100-yard backstroke - and is certain to top a few more in her next three years at Bryant.

The rookie has been recognized as the conference Freshman of the Week twice in 2007-08 and has a relay win in 11-of-12 meets. Only once all season has she not come away with an individual first-place finish.

Toughness runs true through the women's ranks as well, proven no better than through freshman Amy Howell (Clifton Park, NY).

The rookie swam in just seven meets before finding herself sidelined with injury. But in those seven meets, she collected eight individual first-place finishes and helped the cause of three winning relay teams.

She, too, holds a pair of Bryant records, in the 100-yard butterfly and the 200-yard butterfly, the latter set against rival Bentley College on Nov. 10, 2007. It was one of two individual victories over the Falcons, helping the Bulldogs defeat Bentley for the first time in program history.

And all three teamed up to set the Bryant record in the 800-yard freestyle relay, with Looney swimming the first leg and Squillante and Howell swimming legs three and four, respectively.

But that is all just a taste of what the Bryant women swimmers were able to accomplish this season, just three years after the program's birth.

As they now prepare to compete at the New Englands on Friday, Feb. 15, 2008, and, hopefully, the NCAAs after that, the Bulldogs can reflect - if only for a moment - on what they have done and what they have been.

Perfect.