Princeton Tops W. Swimming at H-Y-Ps

The Harvard women’s swimming and diving team can subdue the Lions and handle the Bears, but when it comes to taming the Tigers, the Crimson never seems to have an answer.

Princeton crushed Harvard, 214-105, at the H-Y-P tri-meet contested last weekend, while the Crimson barely escaped a second defeat by eking out a 162-157 victory over Yale at Nunzio Pool in New Jersey.

The Tigers (9-1, 7-0 Ivy) established a commanding first-day lead with a solid performance across the board. In nine races held, Princeton’s swimmers grabbed at least two of the top-three places on six occasions, including five victories highlighted by a one-two finish in the opening 200-yard medley relay. Harvard (7-1, 6-1) managed just five top-three finishes over the same span.

“After the first relay, we hadn’t realized they had all tapered,” freshman LeeAnn Chang said. “I guess it was kind of like ‘whoa’. But after that we pulled ourselves together.”

While the Crimson languished in the Tigers’ wake, the Bulldogs (6-4, 3-3) mounted a surprisingly strong upset push. Capturing three individual events on the first day of competition, Yale, though still far behind Princeton, threatened to send Harvard into the Big-Three basement, trailing 88-81 following Saturday’s competition. At the same point last year, the Crimson led by 35 en route to a 70-point victory.

The Bulldogs were aided by a tapered workout schedule designed to give their squad the best chance possible to upset Harvard, as were the Tigers. Senior Kate Nadeau broke the squad’s first-place drought six events in with a solid come-from-behind victory in the 200-yard butterfly. Biding her time, Nadeau sat in third when she hit the midway mark before beginning to make her move.

After shaving one-tenth of a second off Tigers sophomore Eileen Altenburger’s lead—then 0.61 seconds—Nadeau flew through the final 50 yards, sprinting into the lead with a burst of speed before touching the wall with a final-leg low 31.59, 0.75 seconds faster than Altenburger’s and good for a 0.14-second win.

The distribution of wins on Sunday was slightly more even—Princeton won four events while Harvard and Yale each took two—but it was clear from the first stroke that the Tigers would not be caught.

As was the case on Saturday, the Bulldogs once again captured more top-three finishes—seven to the Crimson’s six—but Harvard’s depth at the bottom of the top heats earned solid points if not glory. Nineteen finishes in the top-eight for the Crimson compared to Yale’s 15 allowed the Bulldogs to sneak even closer, pulling to within five by day’s end, but staved off the upset.

Chang again proved her mettle, dominating the field for a victory in the 200-yard breaststroke.

The win over Yale was sealed by that second place performance and fellow freshman Annika Giesbrecht’s one-tenth of a point victory on the three-meter board.

“Because of the closeness between all of us [in the one-meter], I chose to block that out and not pay attention to what the girls from the other teams were doing,” Giesbrecht said. “I was surprised it was that close.”

—Staff writer Timothy J. McGinn can be reached at mcginn@fas.harvard.edu.