Helen-Wojdylo

Men and women’s swimming at Columbia operate under a long shadow, that of Ivy League heavyweights Harvard and Princeton. It’s been 48 years since Harvard and Princeton were both denied the championship on the men’s side, and only one women’s team has broken the seal in the last 20 years. This means, effectively, that the Lions must battle it out for third every year.

After a long day, Helen Reddy had just tucked her daughter into bed—a familiar, mundane task for the single mother and aspiring singer—when inspiration struck. She scrambled to her daughter’s desk, whipped out a notepad, and wrote without hesitation: “I am strong. I am invincible.” These words of affirmation would later become the lyrics of her hit song “I Am Woman,” which became an unofficial anthem of the women’s rights movement of the 1970s.

Women’s swimming and diving placed sixth at the Ivy League Championships this past weekend, underperforming its dual-meet season, where it won four out of seven meets against Ivy League teams. Though the team struggled to keep up with Ancient Eight titans Princeton and Harvard, the meet was capped by impressive individual performances.

Almost every part of women’s swimming and diving was firing on all cylinders on Saturday when Columbia (4-3, 4-3 Ivy) dismantled Dartmouth (2-7, 1-4 Ivy) 215-84 in its last home meet of the season. The contest against the Big Green also marked the last dual meet of eight seniors’ careers. The Light Blue flexed their muscles to honor those seniors, only dropping three events to Dartmouth the whole day.

In its first two dual meets of 2020, Columbia went undefeated, besting Cornell and Brown to establish momentum and earn a winning record. In both meets, the Lions’ top swimmers continued their stellar individual seasons while the relay and diving units also found success.

Coming off of two consecutive Ivy League dual meet losses, women’s swimming and diving was determined to prove its roster’s talent at this week’s Rutgers Invitational. The Light Blue did just that with nine victories out of 22 rounds throughout the four-day meet, led by impressive performances from its relay units and individual stars.

During a Friday meet at the Percy Uris Natatorium, Columbia women’s swimming and diving (1-1, 1-1 Ivy) lost to Yale (3-0, 2-0 Ivy) by a decisive margin of 45 points. The meet saw slow freestyle and butterfly times, but a strong performance from the team’s first-years.

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