Aquawomen Nab 3rd at Ivies

This weekend's last-ever Ivy League Championships at Brown wrote an important chapter in the annals of women's swimming on the East Coast. It was not the results of the meet, though, which are important. With the dissolution of the championships after five years of competition, women's swimming in the Ivy League has come of age, making the league play-offs unnecessary.

Harvard did what it was expected to do, finishing solidly in third place (679.5), behind Princeton (1238.5) and Brown (996), and ahead of Yale (458). But for all four teams, the meet was really a rite of passage; a step from the comparative obscurity of the Ivy League to the forefront of Eastern collegiate swimming.

Nothin but a Party

Since the Ivy League began attracting highly touted high school swimmers, its representation at the Eastern Championships, a meet attracting the best swimmers on the Eastern seaboard, has increased dramatically. As the programs at Ivy schools improved (especially at Princeton, Brown, Harvard, and Yale), the Ivy League Championships felt less and less like a real championship, and attention gradually shifted to Easterns.

The Ivies became, instead, a detour on the way to the Easterns and the Nationals and "just one more meet to prepare for mentally and physically," Harvard Coach Vicki Hays said earlier this month.

Because the Ivies, unlike the Easterns, have no time requirements, they throw together hundreds of swimmers of widely varying abilities. The result is heat after heat in a marathon dragging over three days. In addition, as Yale Coach Frank Keefe sayd, the meet has degenerated into a virtual four-way battle because the rest of the Ivy League has not kept pace with the recruiting efforts of Princeton, Brown, Harvard, and Yale. But now for the best swimmers and the best teams, the Easterns will supplant the Ivies as the season's championship meet.

"I think a phase of Ivy swimming is passing," Captain Maureen Guildea said last night, adding that "before, anybody could hop in the pool and swim at a championship meet. Now, everything will be much more intense."

The Ivy League's championship, which has belonged exclusively to Princeton, will, from now on, go to the winners of the regular season's round-robin schedule. This system, though, will not skirt the problem of the league's disparity. Harvard, for example, will now have to swim against the likes of lowly Cornell, Penn. Barnard, and Dartmouth in dual-meets.

The last Ivy Championships was, at least for the Crimson, an unspectacular meet. Unable to overcome the one-two combination of Princeton's Betsy Lind, who won five events and Brown's Ellaine Palmer, who won four. Harvard finished comfortably in third place. Through diving and depth, the mainstays of the Crimson all year long. Harvard was able to exceed last year's score by over a hundred points.

Five swimmers--Shelby Calvert. Cary Mazzone, Debbie Zimic, Debbie Smith and Anita Rival--finished in the top 16 in each event they swam. But only sensational freshman Jennifer Goldman could snatch Ivy titles, wining the one-meter dive, and taking the three-meter in a University record 454.65.

Harvard will send its largest contingent ever, 12 swimmers and five divers, to Easterns at Blodgett Pool in two weeks.