By Nick Konotopskyj
Contributing Writer
Success has been a common theme for the St. Bonaventure men’s swimming team. One week after taking down Binghamton by a score of 147.5-88.5, the Bonnies managed to win even more convincingly against the Niagara, 168-74 Saturday
These were the first two meets the team has competed in for more than a month, and with the Atlantic 10 Championships coming up on Feb. 18, it was good for the Bonnies to get back in the pool.
“I think the Niagara meet was a good judgement of where we are going to be in a couple of weeks for A-10’s,” junior Thomas Caulfield said.”We are still coming off winter training, we are a little taxed, our bodies are a little sore, but overall, we had a good meet and the team performed well for the shape we are in.”
Next up for the Bonnies is a trip tonight to Buffalo to face the Bulls. Buffalo appears to be a more difficult opponent, according to Caufield.
“We have a chance to beat them this year. They are a big team, but it would be a nice little upset to pull off at the end of the year,” Caulfield said, “It’s always more intense than some of our other meets because we have such a big history with them. We’ve had some very close meets with them the last couple of years, and it’s always good competition.”
Caulfield, a junior political science major from Northport, competes in the 500 Freestyle, one mile, and the 200 Butterfly.
Buffalo is a team that is known for doing well in the distance events, so the Bonnies will have to make up that point gap in sprinting and relays if they want to come out of Buffalo with a win.
“Our sprinters and relays are very fast this year, and that’s probably what we are going to use as our advantage in A-10’s,” Caulfield said, “So we will probably stack our relays in everything for UB.”
The Bonnies are coming off back-to-back Atlantic 10 Championships in 2013 and 2014, No swim team has ever had a three-peat in the school’s history, and the main goal of this season for them is to change that.
“Our goal is to break new grounds for the school, for us to be the first team to three-peat. Being a junior, I’ve been there, but the freshmen want one, and the seniors want their last win before they finish their careers, so there is a lot of motivation to perform,” Caulfield said.
The meet at Buffalo is the Bonnies final regular season meet before they head off to Spire Institute in Ohio for the A-10 Championships from Feb.18-21. In the past couple of years, George Mason and University of Massachusetts have been the Bonnies main competition for the conference championship, so Bona’s will certainly have its work cut out for itself.
