Women's Swimming and Diving Takes Down Cornell, Dartmouth

In their first Ivy League swimming and diving meet of the season, the Big Red and the Big Green looked anything but big.

Opening its title defense as champion of the Ancient Eight on Saturday, the Harvard women’s swimming and diving team (2-0, 2-0 Ivy) took on Cornell (2-1, 1-1) and Dartmouth (0-2, 0-2), which placed seventh and eighth respectively in the conference last year.

After beating Cornell, 156-144, and Dartmouth, 239-61, the Crimson showed the crowd at Blodgett Pool, as well as its conference rivals, that it is ready to compete in the conference yet again.

The meet started off with the 200-meter medley relay, in which Harvard took both first and second place. The A team, comprised of 2014 NCAA qualifier Danielle Lee and captain Stephanie Ferrell, earned the top spot, finishing in 1 minute, 43.98 seconds.

“We were just really pumped because this was the first meet,” Lee said. “We were really excited to go into it. We just wanted to see how fast we could go.”

The Crimson’s strong performance continued into the next three events, as Harvard swimmers placed first in the 200 freestyle, the 100 breaststroke, and the 100 backstroke—sweeping the latter of the three events.

“We have a lot of depth on our team,” head coach Stephanie Wriede Morawski ’92 said. “All the [swimmers] know how to come together to really race for that end result.”

Notable Crimson performances also came from the freshman swimmers, including Kristina Li and Katie Evans. Li took second in the 100 backstroke with a time of 57.07, while Evans placed second in the 200 breaststroke with a time of 2:27.64. Rookie Regan Kology also took first place for Harvard in the 1000 freestyle, with a 10:10.05 finish, seven seconds ahead of Cornell’s Currie Murch Elliot.

“We’ve been working with the freshmen who have a lot of natural talent on how to fine tune their racing skills,” Morawski said. “The upperclassmen have done an amazing job pushing the point home that they need to focus on the little things—their starts, their turns, their finishes.”

According to Lee, the team’s collective mentality has been somewhat of an anomaly, as swimming is often considered an individual sport.

“We’ve always used each other to [get pumped up] and cheer each other on,” Lee said. “It just really helps getting through the last 10 or 15 meters in the race.”

The Crimson divers started the season off strong as well, sweeping both the three-meter and one-meter springboard events. Sophomore Elina Leiviska placed first in the three-meter competition, and freshman Hannah Allchurch came in first for the one-meter.

“It’s amazing just having the freshmen do so well this early on in the season,” Lee said. “It just shows that we’re going to be so much stronger at the end of the season. It shows the Ivy League that we’re very good at multiple events.”

Although the Dartmouth squad did not place in the top three in a single event, the Bears proved a difficult rival. After Dartmouth’s A team was disqualified from the 200 medley relay, Cornell’s B team edged out the remaining Bears’ squad by .09 seconds for a third place finish, behind two Harvard teams. The Big Red also swept the 200 IM—the only competition in which the Crimson did not place.

Coming into the Tri-Meet as the defending Ivy League champion, Morawski challenged her swimmers to compete in events that they do not typically swim, using the meet for training.

“We know we have a target on our backs and we’re up for the challenge,” Morawski said. “This is our pool, and we’re going to protect it. Our goal was to swim the meet not in our top events and still try to win it. “

Moving into the rest of the season, Lee says that the team views this meet as a stepping-stone towards a larger goal: holding onto the Ivy title. However, Harvard’s main focus remains its mentality and process.

“All of us hope that together as a team we stay positive and strong for the whole season,” Lee said. “[We want to] always give it our best, and as we go through each swim meet, [we want to] take it one step at a time and hopefully at the end win an Ivy Championship again.”