Tropical Trip Helps W. Swimming Triumph

While the freezing temperatures only plummeted outside of Blodgett Pool, the Harvard women’s swimming team found no trouble staying hot on Saturday morning.

The Crimson (6-0) downed Northeastern (4-2) 217-102, winning 13 of 17 events despite not racing its top lineup against the Huskies.

Swimmers credit a trip to Puerto Rico—the team’s tropical training site from Dec. 27 to Jan. 2—for helping to keep their hot streak going in the midst of arctic Cambridge weather.

“It was definitely fun to get away from the cold and go lay on the beach,” freshman Emily Wilson said.

But the excursion was no mere holiday.

In keeping with the team’s practice-heavy philosophy, the trip provided an opportunity for pure, focused preparation and timed races, all of which paid off—especially for Wilson—in the Northeastern meet.

“There were a lot of double practices and not a lot of recovery practices,” Wilson said. “I was also a little more confident after I had survived the training trip, and knew coming out of it that I would be ready for the [Northeastern] meet.”

On Saturday, Wilson became one of three Crimson swimmers to capture two individual competitions, winning the 50-yard freestyle and the 200-yard backstroke. Harvard took the top three and four places in those events, respectively.

“The whole thing just felt really smooth and strong,” Wilson said.

Stacy Blondin and sophomore Jane Evans also won two events apiece.

Blondin—yet another member of Harvard’s stellar freshman class—took first in the 200-yard individual medley and the 500-yard freestyle, while Evans headlined the 400-yard individual medley and the 200-yard breaststroke.

In the diving portion of the meet, freshman Annika Giesbrecht won two events of her own, capturing both the one- and three-meter competitions.

“In practice, we work on consistency and hitting every dive every time.” Giesbrecht said. “And in [Saturday’s] competition, I was able to hit every dive as well as I could. In the three-meter, I did a reverse two-and-a-half somersault tuck that was one of the best ones I’ve ever done in competition.”

“We’ve just been working very hard the past few months, and the training trip in Puerto Rico really paid off,” she added.

Now, Harvard is looking forward to competing against Yale and Princeton Jan. 31.

Both the training in Puerto Rico and the Northeastern meet were valuable experiences, according to the team, in preparing for this particular event—especially for the younger members of the team like Wilson, Blondin and Giesbrecht.

“I definitely feel more confident going into the H-Y-P meet,” Giesbrecht said. “We’ll spend the next few weeks just getting stronger and more consistent.”

The meet will be held in Princeton, N.J.

—Staff writer Pablo S. Torre can be reached at torre@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer J. Patrick Coyne can be reached at coyne@fas.harvard.edu.