PRINCETON, N.J.--Aquawoman Gina Stuart said what everyone must have been thinking. "Princeton doesn't count," she said. "They're just out of our league."

So they were. On the strength of their devastating depth, the Tigers swam off with last weekend's Ivy League swimming championships here, amassing 847 points to win by a 383.5-point margin.

With Princeton out of the team's conscious hopes, then, the meet developed into a virtual dual meet for second place between Harvard and Brown, with the Bruins finally finishing on top, 463.5 to 439.5.

The Crimson squad went into Sunday night's final with a slim 329-328 advantage over the Bruins with a distinct disadvantage in terms of numbers of qualifiers for the last evening's finals.

On One Hand

For instance, in one of the outstanding contests of the entire meet, the 1650-yd. freestyle, Harvard's Maureen Gildea was, based on previous times, the first seed, but Bruin swimmers occupied five of the other 11 places. No other Harvard swimmer was among the top 12.

Gildea won the event in one of the most outstanding individual performances of the championships, posting a national qualifying time of 17:05.86. The time was a new meet and Ivy League record.

For the first 1100 yards of the race, Gildea and Princeton's Ann Habernigg were separated by no more than one-half second. But with 20 laps remaining, the Crimson star began to pull away and eventually won by almost nine seconds.

Butterflier Norma Barton turned in the outstanding individual performance of the weekend, winning the 100 fly on Friday, the 200 on Saturday, and completing here triple with a come-from-behind victory in Sunday night's 50-yd. event.

She won the events in meet record times of 58.65, 2:06.80, and 26.77 seconds, respectively.

Amazing Janie Smith waited until the last possible moment to save her own sanity, winning the 100 IM Sunday night in an impressive meet record of 1:01.30. Before the 100 IM final, Smith had reached the championship races of the 200 IM, the 200 free, the 50 free and the 100 free, but was frustrated by a second, a sixth and two third-place finishes.

In the final analysis, the Harvard squad lived by the diving events, and then died by the diving events, or rather, the lack of them.

Buoyed by Pam Stone and Adriana Holy's successive one-three finishes on Friday and Saturday in the one-and three-meter events, the Crimson was able to stay close to the Bruins. There were no diving events on Sunday, however, so Brown was able to pull ahead and eventually grab second place.

CRIMSON SPLASHES: Harvard's third-place finish is its best ever at the women's Ivy Championships... The Crimson set seven varsity records over the weekend...