NEW YORK — The Columbia men's swimming team unofficially opened its 2019-20 campaign Friday, hosting a swimming-only scrimmage against the University of Toronto inside the Percy Uris Natatorium.
 
"It was a fun afternoon," said 36th-year Columbia head coach Jim Bolster. "The season's long season and it's really competitive. You burn a lot of mental and physical energy in the Ivy dual meets because they're always so close and often times go down to the last relay. So, for those meets we pretty much have to swim our top lineup from top to bottom if we're going to have a chance to win, so today was an opportunity to have a little bit more fun, swim some different events and that's what we did.
 
"I thought the guys did really well. We saw some things that we think will help us further down the road, so it was pretty much everything that we had expected and prepared for. It was a good afternoon"
 
The Varsity Blues posed a great test for Columbia's opening scrimmage of the season as a perennial top contender in Canada's national collegiate athletics organization, U SPORTS.
 
Toronto had a leg up on the Lions, having started their dual season on Sept. 29, but Columbia showed their competitiveness swimming off-races, placing second or higher in eight of 14 events. The Lions lone victor of the day was first-year Ike Shirakata who won the 200-yard individual medley in front of sophomore David Wang who took second overall.
 
Opening up the meet, Columbia's 200 medley relay squad of senior Cole Stevens, senior Nian-Guo Liu, sophomore Jonas Kistorp and senior Kevin Dang placed second in a tightly-contested race decided by just .17 seconds.
 
In the first individual event of the day, sophomore Shawn Lou took second in the 1,000 freestyle leading a 2-3-4 finish ahead of first-year Erik Hansen and junior Jack Scanlon, respectively.
 
Stevens added another runner-up finish in the 100 backstroke before first-year and Toronto native Ray Yang took second-place honors in the 200 butterfly. Yang later earned a runner-up finish in the 100 fly as well.
 
In the 50 free, Kistorp led the Lions with a silver-worthy performance in front of third-place finisher Dang. In the following event, first-year Eugene Li touched the wall second in the 100 free, just in front of fellow first-year Thomas Shepanzyk.
 
The Lions closed out the night with second-place showing in the 200 free relay, using the quartet of Li, Nian-Guo Liu, Hayden Liu and Dang.
 
Columbia officially opens up its dual season in two weeks, traveling to face Army on Nov. 8. Diving will begin at 4:15 p.m., with swimming events to commence at 5 p.m.
 
For the latest on the Columbia men's swimming and diving program, follow @ColumbiaMenSwim on Twitter, @ColumbiaMenSwimming and @ColumbiaDiving on Instagram, and on the web at GoColumbiaLions.com.