Women's Swimming and Diving Competes at Three Events

This weekend, the undefeated Harvard women’s swimming and diving team (3-0, 3-0 Ivy) tested its abilities against competitors at multi-day invitationals near and far: the Texas Hall of Fame Invite, the MIT Winter Invitational and the UGA Fall Invitational.

MIT WINTER INVITATIONAL

While most of the Crimson swimmers made the trek to Austin, a smaller group stayed in Cambridge where Harvard took on its crosstown competitors, as well as athletes from Bowdoin, Tufts and Wellesley.

The first day of competition saw two races. Opening with the 800-yard free relay, Harvard finished second with a time of 7 minutes, 40.51 seconds. Later that evening, junior Marlee Ehrlich placed first in the 1650-yard free.

The Crimson continued to slate top-three finishes, with junior Shori Hijikata placing first and third in the 200-yard butterfly and 300-yard IM, respectively. Junior Margaret Ramsey and sophomore Willa Wang took first and third in the 200-yard fly as well.

Harvard finished the meet with a slew of top-five finishes, including taking first, third and fourth in the 500-yard free.

UGA FALL INVITATIONAL

The diving team spent the weekend away from its swimming counterpart, traveling to Athens, Ga.

In the team’s first competition, the 3-meter springboard, freshman Hannah Allchurch led Harvard, placing sixth with a score of 290.95.  She was trailed by fellow freshmen Jing Leung and Alisha Mah, who placed 11th and 15th, respectively.

The next day saw Allchurch’s dominance continue in the 1-meter competition. Her 266.05 finish put her in fifth, while sophomore Elina Leiviska placed eighth, and Mah took 15th.

In the Crimson’s final event, Leung took center stage, placing fifth in platform diving, an event she has not competed in yet this year.

TEXAS HALL OF FAME INVITE

Thursday morning, most of the Harvard swimmers took to the Lee and Joe Jamail Texas Swimming Center, priming themselves for a weekend filled with NCAA ‘B’ cut times, top-10 finishes and a school record.

The NCAA ‘B’ cut constitutes a swimmer who, if in the top 39 by the end of the season, qualifies for the national tournament. With many Crimson swimmers achieving these times, Harvard coach Stephanie Wriede Morawski ‘92 has high hopes.

“We had some people do some really good things,” Morawski said. “Hopefully we’ll be in a situation where we’ll have multiple people qualify [for Nationals]. That’s our goal—to not only win the Ivy League, but to send as many people to NCAAs as possible.”

Junior Danielle Lee, who represented Harvard at NCAAs last year, put up a plethora of top-20 finishes including a third and fourth place finish in 100- and 200-yard back events, respectively. She achieved NCAA ‘B’ cuts in both these races, and her performance in the 200-yard back also marked Lee’s second Crimson record.

These races proved eventful for Lee’s teammates as well. In the 100-yard back, junior Kendall Crawford and freshman Kristina Li both achieved NCAA ‘B’ times. Harvard also entered a meet-high of five swimmers in the finals of the 200-yard back.

Co-captain Stephanie Ferrell also put up two NCAA ‘B’ cuts, finishing 12th in the 100-yard breaststroke and 10th in the 200-yard breast.

“Getting an NCAA ‘B’ cut is a really great way to track how we’re doing,” Ferrell said. “It’s a great accomplishment and it does place us up there on a national level.”

Enoch also continued to put up high-caliber times, slating a seventh place finish and NCAA ‘B’ cut in the 400-yard IM. Enoch also closed Friday’s proceedings with a fourth place finish in the 800-yard free relay, alongside teammates Lee, sophomore Victoria Chan and junior Sherry Liu.

With three days of back to back competition and each swimmer racing in multiple individual and relay events every day, the Crimson had to come together to overcome fatigue and compete at its highest level.

“We stay focused [at the end of a meet] really by turning to each other,” Ferrell said. “I think that’s one of the things that our team does so well. We use each other as motivation. We kept the energy up and really lifted each other up.”