Aquawomen Roll Past Brown in Key Ivy Meet

If this is what a close meet looks like, the less competitive ones must be downright ugly.

In a meet billed as the battle for the Ivy League title, the Harvard women's swimming team started off quickly and kept getting faster en route to a 175-93 thrashing of defending Eastern champion Brown last might in front of 200 spectators at Blodgett Pool.

In the process, the Crimson (5-1 overall, 2-0 Ivy League) shattered six school records, bringing the total for the past week to 13 overall.

Harvard swimmers took first place in 12 of the 16 events. Additionally, in three of the four races won by a Brown swimmer, the Crimson grabbed second, third and fourth places to take the event by a 9-8 margin. The Bruins finished with more points in only the 200-yd. butterfly.

"It was good to be able to come back after a tough weekend in Alabama and swim as well as we did tonight," Harvard Coach Maura Costin Scalise said. "Resting and shaving let us see how fast we can swim now, and how much faster we can go further on in the season."

Cracked Up

"Brown is always a late-season team, and they chose to wait for Easterns," Costin Scalise added. "But I feel that, provided we continue to improve throughout the rest of the season, that we will be the team to beat in February."

Both relay teams established new Harvard records, but narrowly missed qualifying for the NCAA championships. In the 200 medley relay, Sheila Findley, Mia Costello, Mary Quinn and Linda Suhs grabbed first place in a record time of 1:45.20, only .01 off the NCAA cut for the event.

In her leadoff backstroke leg. Findley also shattered the previous school best for the 50 backstroke, touching in a time of 27.4 seconds.

While the outcome of the meet had already been determined before the final event, the 400 freestyle relay, the Crimson quartet of Suhs, Jill Hutchinson, Quinn and Janice Sweetser cut 1.5 seconds off the previous record with its 3:26.91, also just shy of the NCAA qualifying time.

In her leadoff leg, Suhs completed 100 yards in 51.12 seconds, .03 seconds faster than the "old" school record, set by Suhs only 45 minutes earlier in the actual 100 freestyle event. Suhs contributed to four golds in the meet, with her final win being in the 50 freestyle, topping the field with a time of 23.76 seconds.

Findley, a sophomore from Champaign, II., set a third team mark in the 100 backstroke. Her first place time of 58.14 seconds bested the previous mark by three tenths. Findley grabbed her third victory of the night in the 200 backstroke.

The final Crimson record came in the 200 butterfly, when freshman Nicole Engh broke the previous mark with a second-place time of 2:05.00. Engh's time of 2:08.38 in the 200 individual medley was also good enough for first in the event.

Other Harvard winners were freshman Anne Hardy in the 500 freestyle, Quinn in the 100 butterfly and Sweetser in the 200 freestyle.

In the two diving competitions, junior Jenny Greene continued her unbeaten string, which has lasted through all six meets this year, claming victories on both the 1- and 3-meter board, however, grabbing the top spot by a margin of only .17 points.

Following the meet, Harvard's fourth in five days, the Crimson receive a well-earned respite from competition, getting a full month off before racing at Dartmouth on January 9.

Before that, though, the squad will journey to Palm Springs, Ca., for a training trip designed to help Harvard win its first-ever Eastern championship.

"The trip to Palm Springs should give us a lot of time to work on the little things that can make us faster," Co-Captain Michele Engh said. "Only one phase of our training is done so far, so we do have some more things to accomplish."

Last night's meet brought out the stars of the Harvard banquet circuit, as President Derek Bok, Dean of Harvard College L. Fred Jewett and Director of Athletics Jack Reardon were all present to root the home team on to victory.

Bok even paid a visit to the Harvard bench during a break in the action to offer his encouragement. "He asked all of us if we had an extra suit," Co-Captain Kelley Taber said. "He really wanted to swim for us in the freestyle relay."

Even if he had, the outcome would have been just as impressive.