April 12, 2006
NOTRE DAME, Ind. – The 2006 BIG EAST Champion Notre Dame men’s swimming and diving team officially concluded a very successful campaign with the annual awards banquet on Tuesday evening. Sophomore Jay Vanden Berg (Holland, Mich./Southfield Christian School) received the Notre Dame Monogram Club Team MVP, while senior Patrick Davis (Clearwater, Fla./Jesuit) was given the Notre Dame Club of St. Joseph Valley Rockne Student-Athlete Award. Seven awards were presented in all and the evening concluded with the naming of the 2006-07 team captains.
Vanden Berg was the 2006 BIG EAST champion in the 500-yard freestyle and the 1,650-free along with collecting all-BIG EAST honors in the 400-yard IM. He was the third-highest male point scorer at the BIG EAST meet with 56 points. Jay established school records in the 1,650-free, 1,000-free and the 500-free at the BIG EAST Championships. His times in the 1,650 and the 500-freestyle events were also NCAA consideration cuts. On the season, the sophomore was the second-leading point scorer for the Fighting Irish with a total of 228 along with capturing 15 individual victories, which was the second most on the team.
“Jay was our most consistent distance freestyler throughout the season,” said Fighting Irish head coach Tim Welsh, whose team posted a 10-2 dual meet record this season. “It was just a great job this year by Jay.”
The scholar-athlete award is another academic achievement for Davis during his time at Notre Dame. He was also a recipient of the BIG EAST Conference scholar-athlete postgraduate stipend in recognition of his status as Notre Dame’s nominee for the conference’s annual male scholar-athlete award. Davis is a four-year Dean’s List student as a computer science major in the College of Engineering. He is a member of the athletic department’s Academic Honors faculty mentoring program and the computer science national honor society (Upsilon Pi Epsilon), also serving as a research assistant at Notre Dame in the Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Laboratory (in 2004) and the Computer Vision Research Lab (in ’05-’06). Patrick collected two victories in the 500-yard freestyle and one in the 1,000-free during the 2005-06 season.
“Patrick has been outstanding since he’s been here both as a student and as an athlete,” commented Welsh. “He’s done amazing things in the classroom with robotics, he is our resident genius. He is also well ranked on our top times and performers lists of all-time, so he is the complete scholar-athlete.”
Freshman diver Michael Bulfin (Ft. Lauderdale, Fla./St. Thomas Aquinas), senior swimmer Chris Barnes (Cincinnati, Ohio/St. Xavier) and sophomore swimmer Rob Seery (Garden City, N.Y./Garden City) all received the Most Improved Swimmer/Diver Award. Bulfin became just the third student-athlete in program history to compete at the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships. He also collected all-BIG EAST honors off of the one-meter board. Barnes showed significant improvement during his final collegiate season, including his first-ever trip to the BIG EAST Championships. Seery was a member of Notre Dame’s top-ranked relay team, the 800-free relay, and was a consistent force for the Irish all year long.
“At the beginning of the year, Michael (Bulfin) was just learning some dives and then he advanced to be our first diver in many years to get to the NCAA Championships,” stated Welsh. “It was a very strong and consistent season from Rob Seery with some great performances at the end. And Chris (Barnes) has worked his heart out for four years and he had his greatest level of improvement this year as a senior. That was a real tribute to his efforts.”
The Beeler Hipp Award went to Mitchell Sherman (Columbus, Ohio/St. Charles Prep). This award, which is voted on by the senior class, is presented to an outstanding freshman who best exemplifies the vitality, competitiveness and love for Notre Dame shown by Meghan Beeler and Colleen Hipp in their freshman year. The award continues to honor the 1991-92 men’s and women’s swimming teams for their courage, discipline and love for one another displayed during that season.
Each year the captains select the swimmer they feel performs well both in and out of the pool and exemplifies the term teammate and honors that individual with The Patrick Reilly McManus Captain’s Award. This year’s recipient was sophomore Eric Swenson (Scotch Plains, N.J./St. Joseph).
“Mitchell (Sherman) is very conscientious and hard-working and just one of a great band of guys that we have,” said Welsh. “And I tell you what, there is probably no one who talks it up more than Eric Swenson on a daily basis. We just have a great group of guys.”
Senior co-captain Patrick Heffernan (Norcross, Ga./Norcross) was honored with the Blanchard Award, which is given annually by the Dolphin Club to the swimmer or diver who by performance, inspiration and leadership has exemplified the personal qualities for former Notre Dame swimmer and 1963-64 captain Charles Blanchard.
“This award has gone to a captain many times and this year the team voted for Patrick (Heffernan),” commented Welsh. “He has been very central to the team during all of his time here.”
Freshman Daniel Rave (Hannover, Germany) was given the courage award for his clutch performances in meets against Pittsburgh and Penn State. He came through with a crucial victory in the 200-yard breaststroke in a dual meet against Pitt that helped the Irish win the meet by just one point. In the Shamrock Invitational, he notched another crucial performance by winning that event as Penn State was mounting a late charge on the Notre Dame, yet the Irish would hold on to win.
“Daniel (Rave) came up pretty gutsy in the right times for us this year,” said Welsh. “He won those races in close fashion and that allowed us to go on and win the competitions.”
At the conclusion of the evening, Heffernan and Jamie Lutkus (Granger, Ind./Penn) handed over the captains’ duties for the 2006-07 season to juniors Tim Kegelman (Yorktown, Va./Tabb), Louis Cavadini (South Bend, Ind./Riley) and Ted Brown (Kokomo, Ind./Western).
Besides winning the BIG EAST title for the second straight season and finishing 21st in the final College Swim Coaches Association of America (CSCAA) dual meet rankings, the Irish ranked 12th in the country for their fall grade-point average. As a team, the Notre Dame men posted a 3.18 GPA during the fall of 2005. The Irish were 13th nationally during the spring of 2005. Yale topped the fall rankings with a 3.42 GPA.
“We always seek to improve our position in the academic rankings,” said Welsh. “We are proud of our grades from the fall. That was our highest fall average in quite awhile and that’s higher than we were last spring. We think we are doing it better academically and being ranked 12th on that list is a nice thing. We are proud of that and I congratulate the guys.”
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