Columbia Lions improved their Ivy League record to 3-0 with a home-pool win over the Penn Quakers on Saturday.
Katie Furr and Alyssa Menz started things off for the Lions with a 1-2 finish in 3-meter diving, just in front of Quaker freshmen Sivan Mills and Cassidy Golden.
In the 200 medley relay, Columbia’s Gabrielle Toback, Jennifer Shahar, Christina Ray and Salena Huang took first in 1:42.17, ahead of the Penn foursome of Lauryn Brown, Haley Wickham, Rochelle Dong and Shelby Fortin.
Penn senior Kristi Edleson and sophomore Annie McCotter went 1-2 in the 1000 with 10:05.41 and 10:07.35, respectively. Columbia senior Corinna Bertelsen was third.
All-Ivy senior Fortin of Penn cruised to victory in the 200 free in 1:50.79; she was followed by Alena Kluge and Huang of Columbia.
Columbia’s Toback continued her winning ways in the 100 back with a 55.00 first-place finish. Quakers Lauren Church and Taylor Sneed were second and third, respectively.
The top three 100 breaststrokers were all freshmen: Shahar of Columbia (1:02.89), Wickham of Penn, and Celia Frick of Columbia.
The Lions took the first two spots in the 200 fly with sophomore Kristine Ng beating out freshman Trudiann Patrick 2:01.02 to 2:01.96. Penn freshman Madeleine Jardeleza finished third.
Quaker freshman Dong was the fastest sprinter of the day, touching first in the 50 free in 23.55. Ray of Columbia was second, just in front of Penn’s Emily Baturka.
Columbia junior Menz took the 1-meter diving. Penn’s Mills was again second; Furr, third.
The only two-event winner of the meet was Penn’s Rochelle Dong. She made the 100 free look easy with her 50.65 victory over teammate junior Irene Katopodis and Columbia junior Mikaila Gaffey.
Church of Penn won the 200 back in 1:59.68. She was followed by two Lions: Kluge and Toback. In the 200 breast it was Columbia’s Ng out front with 2:19.37 with a very evenly-split second, third and fourth 50s. Her teammate Frick had a strong second half which allowed her to beat out Penn’s Wickham for second.
Columbia sophomore Mallory McKeon won the 500 free in 4:56.79. Penn’s McCotter and Edleson were just behind.
For the second day in a row, Patrick edged out Columbia teammate Ray to win the 100 fly; this time the margin was even closer: 54.97 to 55.12. Penn freshman Dong was only .17 back in third.
Kluge of Columbia handily won the 200 IM in 2:02.71. Penn freshman Ellie Grimes was second, nearly a second ahead of the Lions’ Frick.
The Quakers’ Emma Siewert, Church, Katopodis, and Fortin combined to win the final event, the 400 free relay, in 3:27.71.
Final score: Columbia Lions 166 – Penn Quakers 134
The Yale team prides itself on pushing through dual meets, practicing straight through Columbia, through HYP, and resting for Ivies. Many strategies for dual/taper season are available – Yale prefers focusing in on the championship meet and doing the best they can swimming tired at the duals. The League knows it and knows that if other teams suit and shave, they can outperform Yale in duals. This doesn’t hinder the Yale girls’ attitude at all – they set their sights higher, as do their coaches, than over-rested dual meet swims.
I’ve never seen Columbia suit up for meets they could win handily otherwise. Last year it was only Harvard and Princeton. Let’s watch the rest of the season and see if your argument stands. Go Tigers!
nope, they did it for brown last year too. final score 186 – 108.
Last year Columbia was also suited up for their meet against Cornell and Cornell was not suited up (Guest- I don’t know where you get your information from?). I believe it was Columbia’s strategy, as others have said, to use the suits often, swim fast in season, and then go into championships confident. I also believe their strategy worked, as they were very impressive at Ivy’s last year. Many coaches are adopting the philosophy that fast swimming will lead to faster swimming, and therefore wearing suits in season will actually result in the best performance at championships.
Obviously if you wear a suit in season you will not show as big of a drop at the end of the season,… Read more »
dual meet is a totally different format from championships, idk if columbia can beat pton or harvard there… but i will say there seemed to have been a lot of starpower missing from the harvard meet and cu’s freshmen have been performing GREAT. i’ve seen columbia suit up for meets they knew they could win handily before, i’m not convinced by all this suit outrage. sorry ya teams got burnt!
Both Yale and Harvard are teams that could have easily beat Colombia on an even playing field. The goal here was pretty apparent: win the ivy dual meet title. If Colombia want to get the feel I racing in suits why would they do it three dual meets in a row and most likely one of their 3 invite options I their schedule. Do what they please, but they’re definitely not earning any supporters on their quest to get the regular season title and then into championship season. Go Tigers, teach the lions a lesson and clinch that title.
Counter point to the NBAC argument. If we look at the results NBAC does not taper off much. In 2012… Read more »
^Overcome a 70 point deficit? Yes, easily enough as you will see at Ivys. And no, Harvard didn’t wear them either, as these upper teams have a higher goal. Plain and simple, Columbia wore the suits because they knew it was the only way they could beat Harvard. They wore the suits against Yale because they knew that it was the only way they could beat Yale. I guess they needed insurance for Penn too. Watch how they will also wear suits for Princeton in order to win and how they won’t for the other ivy teams because they can beat them without them. All this kind of thing does is put a poor taste in the mouth of the… Read more »
Guest – what if the ulterior agenda is to “swim faster at the end of the year”? There are more-and-more coaches who feel that they’re better off having their swimmers get used to swimming in suits than having it be a totally new experience for one meet at the end of the year.
Ya know who else suits up for almost every meet? NBAC.
Devil’s advocate I guess. There’s just little chance of them beating HYP for a conference championship. That’s where you’ll see big drops by HYP, but not so much by Columbia. The ulterior motive is to win the dual meet title which would otherwise be out of reach, and the conference title is also out of reach. As for NBAC, yes we swam against them in their suits, and they killed us. Guess who killed many of them by season end.
Our team wore old tech suits, as did Penn.
well yale didn’t
do you think yale’s wearing suits would’ve helped them overcome a 70 point deficit?
I wonder if the lions suited up for this meet like they have for their past two. Based on the times I would say yes.