Women's Swimming & Diving

Princeton Claims Fourth-Straight Women's Swimming & Diving Championship

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The Princeton Tigers won their fourth-straight Ivy League Women’s Swimming and Diving Championship on Saturday night, pulling away over the final events inside the Katherine Moran Coleman Aquatics Center to secure the title.

It is the Tigers’ 27th overall title, most of any Ivy League member, and the first time since the early 2000s that a school has won four in a row. Penn, who finished fifth in last year’s championship, finished second with 1204 points. Harvard finished third with 1153.5 points, holding off Brown and their 1137 points at the end to keep their top three finish.

Saturday’s evening session got underway with the 1650 Yard Freestyle. Penn had the two fastest seed times and they finished 1-2 in the event with Sydney Bergstrom taking the gold and Anna Moehn earning silver with times of 16:02.63 and 16:06.59, respectively. Brown’s Natalie Garre posted a time of 16:11.29 to finish third. Bergstrom punched her ticket to the NCAA Championships with her time.

The 200 Yard Backstroke was next on the docket. Anya Mostek, who had consistently been on the podium all week, won her second individual title of the week, winning by 1.77 seconds in 1:52.70. Penn’s Kate Levensten came in second at 1:54.44, just edging out Devyn Sargent of Yale, who finished in 1:54.85 for third place. Penn also finished fourth in the event and with the early points, had cut Princeton’s team lead from 178 points to just 93. Mostek once again earned a bid to the NCAA Championships.

But the 100 Yard Freestyle saw Princeton take two of the top three spots to open some breathing room in their pursuit of the team championship. Brown senior Morgan Lukinac won the sprint event with a time of 48.29 seconds, missing the pool record by 0.01 seconds. The duo of Tigers swimmers, senior Sabrina Johnston and freshman Sophia Sunwoo, finished in 48.55 seconds and 48.90 seconds to take the silver and bronze medals, respectively. Lukinac's time was enough to clinch her spot in the NCAA Championships.

Harvard picked up another top finish in the 200 Yard Breaststroke as first year Aliana Marakovic cleared the field by nearly one second to take first place. Eliza Brown of Princeton finished second in 2:12.92 seconds and Jessey Li of Yale finished third 0.19 seconds behind her to finish third.

In the 200 Yard Butterfly, a pair of Princeton swimmers bookended a Harvard swimmer, with Eleanor Sun’s first-place time of 1:54.78 coming within 0.18 seconds of setting the Ivy Meet record and 0.16 seconds of breaking the pool record. Sydney Lu finished second with a time of 1:56.25 and Heidi Smithwick finished about a half of a second behind to finish third. The title was Sun's third of the meet as she once again earned an automatic bid to the NCAA Championships.

The last swimming event of the night was the 400 Yard Freestyle Relay. For the first two legs, Princeton and Brown were neck and neck, with Princeton holding a slight advantage. But the Bears, behind Isabella Dieffenthaller, created a small amount of separation in the third leg of the relay and put both the Ivy Meet and Katherine Moran Coleman Aquatics Center record within reach. Princeton’s Sun was closing hard but Brown’s anchor, Lukinac, who had already won the 100 Yard Freestyle earlier in the night, brought it home for the Bears in 3:14.72, just 0.24 seconds off the records. Princeton finished in second with a time of 3:15.10 and Harvard finished third with a time of 3:17.77.

In the diving portion of the night’s events, Penn senior Sadie Howard, who sat in third after the preliminary round, totaled 331.25 points in the finals to win the gold medal in the 3 Meter Diving. Charlotte Norman of Princeton accumulated 320.15 points to finish second and Harvard’s Nina Janmyr totaled 305.30 points to finish third.