Harvard Splits HYP Meet, Dealt First Loss by Princeton

The Harvard men’s swimming and diving team suffered its first loss of the season, falling to archrival Princeton, 193-160, in the annual Harvard-Yale-Princeton meet. With the Crimson’s 251-102 victory over Yale, Harvard finished its dual-meet season registering an 8-1 overall, 6-1 Ivy record.

The Crimson’s main focus for the two-day double dual meet was the Tigers, with whom they remained neck and neck for the entire weekend. Harvard led Princeton 96-90 at the end of Saturday’s competition at Blodgett pool, with both teams swapping the lead throughout the course of Sunday.

“The effort was definitely there,” junior distance swimmer Alex Meyer said. “We stayed positive the whole way through, but we’ve just got to work on some skills over the next month.”

Meyer claimed two of Harvard’s seven first-place finishes, winning the 500-yard and 1650-yard freestyle with times of 4:22.83 and 15:00.13, respectively. These times were good enough to earn Meyer NCAA “B” cut in both events.

Sophomore Blake Lewkowitz and senior co-captain Eric Lynch also posted NCAA “B” times in the 1650 freestyle.

Lynch recorded two additional NCAA “B” times throughout the two-day contest, finishing second in the 200-yard freestyle and fourth in the 500-yard freestyle.

Senior co-captain David Guernsey also helped boost Harvard’s score, capturing himself a NCAA “B” cut in the 200-yard freestyle with a first-place time of 1:36.16.

The Crimson’s medley relay teams picked up two victories for Harvard, with both recording NCAA “B” times. In the 200-yard medley relay, sophomore Jordan Diekema, junior Simone Melillo, senior Bill Jones and Guernsey touched the wall in 1:28.52.

The foursome also competed together in the 400 yard medley relay, emerging victorious with a 3:14.18 time.

Diekema shone in the individual events as well. Battling sickness all week, Diekema overcame this obstacle to finish first in the 200-yard backstroke in 1:45.16. The sophomore also placed second in the 100-yard backstroke, falling only to Yale senior standout Alex Righi.

On the board, sophomore Zac Ranta blew away the competition in the one-meter dive, finishing with a score of 288.05 points. Ranta also came in third in the three-meter dive, barely passed by Yale’s Drew Teer and Princeton’s Daniel Dickerson.

“Overall at this meet we showed a lot of improvement and we showed where we can be in the next four weeks,” Guernsey said. “As a team I think we really came together and accomplished something.”

But the Crimson has many more improvements to make. The team will look for revenge as it faces its rivals once again in early March for the Ivy League championship meet in the Tigers’ home pool.

“We just need to train a lot during the next few weeks and focus on becoming a better team over the next month,” Lynch said.

“We lost some races in a few key spots, which is okay because we have four weeks until the conference meet and we can make a lot of improvements and win those races.”

Junior freestyle swimmer Tyler Holland, who competed in five of the contest’s events, is also optimistic.

“Princeton should be terrified that that was even a close meet,” Holland said.

Harvard will begin its championship meet season at home, when it hosts the ECAC championships at the end of the month.

—Staff writer Alexandra J. Mihalek can be reached at amihalek@fas.harvard.edu.