Princeton Dynasty Survives Last Race

The Harvard and Princeton women’s swimming and diving teams might as well have been fighting in a boxing ring rather than swimming in the Ivy League Championships, as both teams went back-and-forth in a classic duel.

The Crimson came up just short in the pursuit of its first Ancient Eight title since 1992, as the Tigers eventually came out on top, winning the three-day competition by a mere 16.5 points.

Harvard jumped out to the lead after Thursday’s first six events, but after Friday’s competition, Princeton had regained the lead, holding a 16.5 point advantage over the Crimson heading into the last day of the meet. With only two events left in the championship—the three-meter diving and the 400-yard free relay—Harvard had a chance to overtake the Tigers but failed to make the final push. With three divers in the finals, the Crimson could only muster a 4-5-6 finish, leaving the squad 14.5 points behind Princeton going into the last relay. Harvard needed a relay victory and a Tigers collapse, and when Princeton came into the wall third ahead of the Crimson in fourth, Harvard’s title dreams were shot.

With their victory, the Tigers took their fifth-straight Ivy league title finishing with 1361 points—the first team to ever accomplish the feat—followed by the Crimson with 1344.5 points. Yale finished third with 1211 points followed by Brown (1064.5), Columbia (937), Penn (936), Dartmouth (533) and Cornell (410).

In the penultimate event of the competition, the three-meter dive, freshman Annika Giesbrecht, junior Anne Osmun and senior Renee Paradise all made the final eight with high hopes for strong finishes to close the gap on Princeton going into the last event. Osmun was in position to nail down the number-one spot for Harvard but posted her worse dive of the day in her last attempt, dropping her down the leader-board. Osmun finished fourth with 450.90 points, Giesbrecht followed in fifth with 446.60 points, with Paradise in sixth with 442.80 points.

Even with the disappointing three-meter performance, the Crimson divers proved very valuable all weekend as Giesbrecht notched the victory in the one-meter diving and all the Harvard divers scored.

“Our divers were phenomenal and they really were an integral part of this team,” Harvard coach Stephanie Wriede Morawski said. “We wouldn’t have been as close without them.”

Once the diving was over, sophomore Erin Mulkey, senior Kate Nadeau, freshman Emily Wilson and junior Molly Ward tackled their 400-yard free relay with the knowledge that a team victory was more or less out of sight.

“We were all warming up together and we saw the final score come up after the diving and knew it was pretty much over,” Ward said. “But we tried to look to our teammates and swim for them and get as many points for our team as we could.”

Even with an eventual loss, Harvard set up the exciting finish with a number of strong performances on Saturday, fueled again by incredible depth.

In the opening event on Saturday, the 1650-yard freestyle, Wilson—who also finished second in the 500-yard freestyle on Thursday and third in the 200-yard freestyle on Friday—finished fourth in the 1650 with a time of 16:51.07. Weisenthal—who finished fourth in Friday’s 1000-yard freestyle—placed eighth in the 1650 with a time of 16:58.57.

In the 200-yard backstroke, sophomore Michelle Bright successfully defended her 2003 Ivy League Championship title and posted the Crimson’s only individual swimming victory of the 2004 championship. In a race in which five swimmers, three of them from Harvard, came into the wall at the same time, Bright was able to touch out the field and won with a time of 2:02.23, only .02 seconds ahead of the second place finisher. Junior Emily Stapleton finished at 2:02.47 to finish fourth and junior Molly Brethauer finished fifth at 2:02.95.

“Going into the last turn, I knew I wasn’t ahead,” Bright said. “But I’m a back-half swimmer, and I was able to pull it off. We were right with Princeton, so it was important to get a win to stay close.”

“Michelle’s 200 backstroke was phenomenal,” Morawski added. “Coming into the finish it was a dead heat and she found a way to get her hand on the wall first.”

The Crimson would continue to exhaust its competition with sheer depth in a number of championship finals on Saturday.

In the 100-yard freestyle Ward finished third and broke her previous Harvard varsity record of 51.11 by finishing at 50.94. Mulkey finished close behind at 51.93 to finish sixth.

“I was really happy that I broke the record,” Ward said. “Also, I was seeded fourth going into the race and came in third so I was excited to move up a place to get the team more points.”

In the 200-yard breastroke freshman LeeAnn Chang (2:18.12) almost posted another Crimson victory but was just touched out at the finish by Princeton’s Stephanie Hsiao (2:17.92).

Harvard also had four swimmers in the final heat of the 200-yard butterfly. Nadeau pulled out a second-place finish with a time of 2:02.64 followed by sophomore Jane Evans—who also finished second in Friday’s 400-yard individual medley—who came in fourth in the 200-yard butterfly with a time of 2:04.36. Freshman twins Kelly Blondin (2:04.60) and Stacy Blondin (2:05.25) came in sixth and eighth respectively to round out the Crimson’s top-eight finishes in the event.

Other strong performances throughout the week included junior Allison Bates’ performance in the 100-yard butterfly in which she finished second, narrowly missing a race victory and a school record.

“[The record] was definitely something I wanted to get,” Bates said. “It is definitely on the horizon, but I can’t be disappointed because it was a best time for me.”

The team of Brethauer, co-captain Erica DeBenedetto, Chang and Ward finished third in the 200-yard medley relay on Friday with a time of 1:44.21. The 800-yard free relay of Weisenthal, Kelly Blondin, Nadeau and Wilson finished third with a time of 7:28.73.

Even with the narrow defeat, Harvard has many positives to look back on at the conclusion of its season. In last year’s championship, Princeton beat the Crimson handily by more than 200 points, a far cry from the 16.5 points that separated the two teams in this year’s meet. Harvard’s depth, above all, ignited its performance this year and allowed the team to score in bunches.

“We only had two individual champions and no relay wins and we were still only down by 16.5 points,” Morawski said. “All year long we have been emphasizing that it takes the full team to be successful. We only competed with 17 swimmers and three divers and the remaining 10 athletes were integral to this meet and kept up the momentum. The reason we were so close to Princeton was because of the depth on the team.”

Coming into the championship, a lot of pressure was placed on Harvard due to its strong performances throughout the season.

“There was a lot of pressure but I think we handled it well,” Morawski said. “After the Harvard-Yale-Princeton meet everyone was talking about us, and we knew coming in that [winning the championships] was going to be tough.”