Cambridge, MA--Senior Rich Beukema (Lexington, MA/Lexington HS) finished second in both diving events and helped the Harvard men's swim team to second place at the 1995 Eastern Championships, held March 3-5 at Princeton's DeNunzio Pool.
Beukema scored 465.90 points in the one-meter dive and 497.75 points in the three-meter dive to finish second to Navy's Nate Smith in both events. He will gain First Team All-Ivy honors for his efforts. The finishes marked a great improvement for Beukema, who was sixth in one-meter and eights in the three-meter at the 1995 EISL Championships. Beukema will go for an NCAA bid this week-end at the Zone A Diving Championships at Navy.
During the year, Beukema was a double-event winner in dual meets against Columbia, Army, Dartmouth, Brown, Cornell, and Pennsylvania. He also won the three-meter event versus Northeastern and Princeton/Yale.
Harvard saw its three-year stranglehold on the Eastern title end, but the Crimson safely finished second and saw its streak of placing no lower than third at the EISL Championships extended to 23 years. The Crimson, under the direction of fourth-year head coach Mike Chasson, finished 1994-95 with a 9-2 dual meet record and owned an 8-1 mark in the EISL.
Beukema, a biology concentrator at Harvard, is a 1990 graduate of Lexington High School, where he was a three-year member of the swim team. As a senior, he was a Middlesex League all-star and placed third in the Massachusetts state meet.