On Oct. 14, the Ithaca College men’s swim and dive team returned to the pool, earning themselves a big win over the Worcester Polytechnic Institute Engineers and Hobart College Statesmen, with their sights set yet again on dethroning defending Liberty League champion, the Rochester Institute of Technology.

First-year head coach Mike Blakely-Armitage wants to make an immediate impact by preaching a solid and strong team culture this season. Blakely-Armitage said he looks forward to working with everyone on a team level and an individual level.

“There’s a lot of technique work we want to do and there are some individuals who also have goals that we want to help them reach,” Blakely-Armitage said. 

Blakely-Armitage spoke about the individual performers he expects big things from, like senior freestyle James Collishaw, junior freestyle Matthew Stevens, junior butterfly Santiago Ludwig and many more.

“While I’m naming names, we are really going to be depending on everybody on our team to perform in order for our team to be successful,” Blakely-Armitage said. 

The biggest change this season however is Blakely-Armitage himself, stepping up into the head coaching position after spending the last four seasons as assistant head coach to former head coach Kevin Markwadt, who retired after the 2022–23 season. Blakely-Armitage said he wants his first season as head coach to be about defining success.

“We are going to lose some dual meets this year, we are going to win some dual meets, but we look to do our December invite, we look to Liberty Leagues as some big focal points for the season,” Blakely-Armitage said. “We have some significant rivalries with [the Rochester Polytechnic Institute] and RIT and we’d like to put in a good showing. … We are also building our men’s diving program and it’s exciting to see where that is going.”

A returning member of that men’s diving team is sophomore diver Kian Long, someone who Blakely-Armitage has big expectations for after a strong first-year season. Long said that last season the team had a strong bond and he wants to continue that.

“I feel like we did a great job last season coming together as one,” Long said. “Coming from different backgrounds, everyone from different areas across the U.S, coming together under one roof in that pool was definitely a great thing.” 

While Long looked promising last season, he dealt with an injury that caused him to struggle to compete in the three meter dive. He did, however, score a season-best 251.10 in the team’s meet vs. Alfred last season in the one meter six dives, and he scored a season-best 479.95 at the Dick Comanzo Diving Meet in the one meter 11 dives. Now with the help of his coaching staff, Long said he’s ready to attack his sophomore season at full health.

“The coaches are great,” Long said. “They know what we want to accomplish and how to get there. They care so much about this program and they’re willing to do whatever it takes to get us to the spot we need to be at.” 

While Long and many of the other divers are only underclassmen, they are already stepping up to fill the holes left by last year’s graduating seniors, a group that Long said helped him integrate into the environment of the team.

“Getting to be around with all of the new divers and sort of showing them that new environment and that we all need to fill the holes of the seniors who left last year,” Long said. “We are getting there, but once we get there, we’ll definitely be on track to get some stuff going.”

While the divers look to step up on their end, junior captain freestyle/butterfly Matthew Mitros is looking to step into that leadership role on the swimming side of the team, just one year after he transferred in from Oregon State. Mitros said he wants to be that leader the new swimmers can look up to.

“Last year, I was coming in, it was my first year and I didn’t really know what was going on,” Mitros said. “This year, all of a sudden I’m a captain, I’m leading the team, and now I know what’s happening. I want to tell the new guys what is coming, what to prepare for.” 

Despite Mitros’ short stint with the team, his captainship represents the leadership he shows and the trust his teammates have in him to support the rest of the team. Mitros will look to carry that weight of leadership throughout the year.

Mitros said he thought last year went really well and was happy with the majority of the team’s individual results, especially his own. Mitros swam his season-best 50 and 100 freestyle and butterfly in the Liberty League Championships. He clocked a 21.14 for his 50 freestyle, a 46.05 for his 100 freestyle, a 23.31 for his 50 butterfly, and a 50.72 for his 100 butterfly. Individual success is one thing, but from a team standpoint, Mitros said the men are exceedingly determined entering this season, cutting down on their yardage with a lighter workload moving into the season.

“Some things have changed; we are taking a step away from ‘yardage, yardage, yardage,’ it seems, which is welcomed by just about everyone on the team,” Mitros said. We are entering this season a little softer, seeing less injuries so far which is awesome” 

With the preparation all out of the way, Mitros is now ready to get into the season and while he personally wants to swim his best times, there is another group he said he has confidence in to help this team really find success.

“I think the freshmen and the sophomores are going to do a lot,” Mitros said. “We lost a good amount of guys last season and there’s a lot of opportunities for the younger guys to step into scoring positions on the team and leadership positions on the team.” 

The team got its season started off strong with a win over Hobart College 241–44 and a win over WPI  175–123 in their first dual meet. Up next they have a three-meet road trip against RPI on Oct. 28, SUNY Cortland on Nov. 4 and their first of two head-to-head meets with rival RIT on Nov. 18 before returning to Ithaca for the Bomber invitational spanning Dec. 1–3 at the Kelsey Partridge Bird Natatorium.