The women’s swimming and diving team headed to Philadelphia last Friday expecting a close, highly competitive meet against the evenly-matched Quakers.
The Light Blue beat Penn by only a single point for fifth place at last year’s Ivy Championships and had previously finished one slot ahead of them at the championships in each of the previous three years. Although the Lions got the exciting meet they anticipated, they came out of the weekend on the short end of a 157-143 score. With the loss, Columbia’s record drops to 1-3 in the Ivy League and 2-3 overall.
“I thought we swam quite well,” sophomore Kathryn Taylor said. “We really did just get edged out in a few events.”
Many of the events in the meet were determined by extraordinarily close finishes; 11 of the 14 races were decided by less than one second and six were decided by less than half a second.
Sophomore Lauren Morford was barely edged out in her two races, keeping with the meet’s close-finishing theme. She swam a highly competitive 1,000-yard freestyle with Penn sophomore Cammie Villareal, but Villareal out-touched her for first place by just .99 seconds, with a winning time of 10:21.72. Morford and Villareal had a similarly close finish in the 500-free later in the evening, with Villareal winning by just .87 seconds.
The Lions were more successful in the short-distance freestyle events. First-year Kate Head won the 200-free in 1:54.83, beating Penn senior Katie Stores—the 2002 Ivy champion in the 200-free—by .73 seconds. Head also out-touched Stores for second place in the 100-free, which Lion sophomore Mary McCue won in 53.27 seconds. McCue nearly won the 50-free as well, but lost out to Penn junior Laura Hotaling by just .02 seconds.
Kelly McConnell turned in two of the strongest performances of the evening, winning both the 100- and 200-yard backstroke by wide margins. The sophomore won the 100 by more than a second over junior teammate Lauren Belive and touched first in the 200, more than two seconds ahead of Penn sophomore Margot Newcomer.
Meanwhile, the Light Blue divers dominated the meet on the boards. Seniors Teresa Herrmann and Grace Coyle and first-year Juliet DiFrancisco finished 1-2-3 on the one-meter board, while Coyle and Herrmann went 1-2 in the three-meter event with DiFrancisco taking fourth.
The 200-freestyle relay, the final event of the meet, epitomized the tightness of the competition. Entering the event, the Lions trailed the Quakers by nine points, and needed a 1-2 finish for a victor y or a 1-3 placing for a tie. The Lion relay teams fought until the end, but the Quaker “A” team edged the Lion “A” team by .58 seconds to win the race and the meet. Columbia’s “B” team took third.
“This was by far the most intense and exciting meet we’ve had so far this season,” Belive said. “It was a back-and-forth battle until the very last relay. Both teams were at an even par, and both teams really wanted to win. You could feel the intensity on the pool deck ... it was simply awesome.”
Although the Lions left Pennsylvania with another notch in their loss column, head coach Diana Caskey was generally pleased with the team’s outing in the close meet.
“I was really excited with a lot of the performances,” Caskey said. “We swam well, but didn’t get all the touches.”
The Light Blue returns to action for its final meet of the fall semester this Saturday with a home meet against Wagner College.
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