Lions Headed to 2020 Ivy League Championships

Wednesday, February 26

Cambridge, Mass.

6:00 P.M.

Columbia

Ivy League Championships

Photo by: Mike McLaughlin

2/25/2020 2:06:00 PM | Men's Swimming and Diving

Live Results Schedule of Events Official Psych Sheet

Columbia men's swimming and diving will compete at the conference championships, Feb. 26-29, at Harvard's Blodgett Pool

NEW YORK — The Columbia men's swimming and diving team is set to begin its postseason competition this week, heading to Cambridge, Massachusetts, for the 2020 Ivy League Championships. The four-day meet will run from Feb. 26-29 at Harvard's Blodgett Pool.

Action will kick off Wednesday at 6 p.m. ET with the 200 medley and 800 free relay finals. From Thursday to Saturday, preliminaries will begin at 11 a.m. each day, with finals commencing at 6 p.m.

Fans can catch all the action from each session Wednesday-Saturday live on ESPN+.

DUAL SEASON IN REVIEW
The Lions finished the dual season with a 6-3 overall mark, including a 5-2 record in Ivy League contests to finish second in the conference standings. Columbia's league losses came against Harvard and Brown.

LOOKING BACK: 2019 IVIES
Aiming to improve on last season's fourth place finish at the league meet, Columbia returns slew of top contributors who finished in the top eight at the Ivy Championships. Those athletes include senior Nian-Guo Liu (6th, 200 IM; 3rd, 200 Free, 7th, 100 Free), sophomore Jonas Kistorp (4th, 50 Free; 2nd, 100 Fly), junior Albert Gwo (5th, 50 Free; 6th, 100 Fly, 8th, 100 Free), junior John Scanlon (5th, 1,000 Free), sophomore Joey Licht (8th, 400 IM; 6th, 200 Back), and sophomore David Wang (7th, 200 Breast)

Columbia will be without the services of All-American diver Jonathan Suckow, who swept the diving events at the Ivy meet the past two seasons, as he is taking a year off school to train for the 2020 Summer Olympic Games in his native Switzerland.

LIONS TO WATCH
Gwo comes into the meet with three times that rank inside the top-five, including a conference-leading 43.10 in the 100 freestyle. The junior also owns the No. 2 time in the 50 free, a school-record 19.50 and sits fifth in the 100 butterfly.

Across four events, Liu is seeded in the top five including a pair of No. 2 times in the 100 breaststroke (53.10) and 200 breaststroke (1:57.19). He also currently ranks third in the conference in the 200 free (1:35.88) and fifth in the 200 IM (1:45.92).

Sophomore Kistorp's top time comes in the 100 fly, where he ranks second overall in the league with a time of 46.79. The Denmark native also holds the No. 6 seeds in both the 50 free (19.92) and 100 backstroke (48.00).

First-years round out the top-eight seeds, with Ray Yang ranking eighth overall in the 200 fly with a time of 1:46.64, while fellow first-year, diver Ben Blizard, comes in with the eighth-best score on the 1-meter springboard (328.95).

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.