The beginning of a new season always brings a wave of questions that will have to be answered before you truly know how good a team is going to be. Ever-changing rosters in college sports leave gaps in graduates that younger athletes have to step up and fill, and shifting athletes means shifting leadership and team bonds. All this is normal and can be anchored by the one individual who remains stable year after year in a college program, the coach. Fairfield Swimming and Diving didn’t have the luxury of stability this year though, as over the summer former Cornell Assistant Head Coach Jake Lichter stepped into the RecPlex to take over the vacant head coaching job here at Fairfield.
Lichter is a decorated coach with an exceptional resume including coaching four Ivy League champions, having 14 school records broken by his athletes, and supporting his team to have an average GPA of 3.6 in his last season at Cornell. He’s certainly proven himself to be excellent at what he does, but a question would still be waiting for him with his new team. Would all that success be replicable at Fairfield?
So far, for both Coach Lichter and the Stags, things are looking good. On Friday and Saturday, the team took on Sacred Heart, Southern Connecticut State University, and Manhattan University in the season-opening Fairfield Invitational Tournament and picked up two dominant wins. The men’s roster earned 756 points over the weekend and the women brought in 759, both almost doubling the second-place teams behind them.
Fairfield’s divers started things off strong on Friday with the men’s group sweeping the podium spots of both the one and three-meter dives. In the one meter, Sophomore Tyler Robie secured first place with an impressive 231.38 points, followed by fellow Sophomore Andrew Cataldo’s 224.10 points and Senior Noah Duncan’s 216.30. Cataldo took over on the three-meter with a commanding 257.78 point first-place performance, backed by Duncan’s 228.53, and Robie’s 216.98. The women’s group also found success with Sophomore Lillian Tonole’s score of 207.60 landing her at third in the one-meter alongside Senior Elizabeth Beaulieu’s 177.30 point sixth place dives. In the three-meter, Tonole scored 215.93 points for fourth place and Beaulieu scored 204.08 for sixth again.
This excellent start for the Stags carried them into day two, where the teams won first place in 26 of the 28 swim events. Across the board the group was incredible, but an especially noteworthy performance came from Sophomore Aidan Schnapf who swam an unbelievable 2:07.84 in the 200-meter backstroke to tie the Fairfield record. Stags absolutely packed the podium all afternoon, taking the top three spots in 13 different events throughout the day.
The festivities were capped off with an exhilarating duel in the Men’s 400 Freestyle Relay between Fairfield’s two teams. Tim Regan ‘26, Cormac Rouse ‘28, Nicholas Besgen ‘26 and Joseph Stewart’s ‘25 time of 3:33.18 just barely edged out Schnapf, Alex Sirkowa ‘26, Max McMillan ‘28 and graduate student Chris Dauser with their time of 3:33.94. This race really captured the true tale of the day, as the Stags best competition often seemed to be their teammates, a true testament to how hard these athletes must push each other every day at practice.
The invitational was the best start this unit could have asked for. For the team and their new leader Coach Lichter, it seems like all of the preseason questions have been answered. The Stags left no doubt that they were the best team in the pool on both days of competition, and I believe this success will continue into their upcoming lineup of dual meets, kicked off in their matchup against Bryant on the 11th. It’s hard to judge from just the season opener what the identity of a team will be in the long run and what things will look like when it’s time for the MAAC Tournament in February. However, if this level of excellence can be kept up for the full season, this team is capable of achieving some very special things.
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