With its first ever Harvard-Yale-Princeton tri-meet followed by a match-up against Penn, this was the mother of all dual-meet weekends for the women's swimming and diving team.

No one thought this would be an easy two days for the Crimson, but it fought to keep its record among the best in the Ivy League, failing to tame the Tigers 111-189, but keeping the Bulldogs on a tight leash 157-143 and demolishing the Quakers. Certainly, the team's bigger test of the two meets was against conference-leading Princeton and arch-rival Yale. HARVARD  111 PRINCETON  189 HARVARD  157 YALE  143

"We definitely wanted to beat Yale," said freshmen Janna McDougall. "For Princeton we wanted to stay as close as possible and preferably finish closer than we did last year."

From the start, Harvard knew wins against either team would not come easy, as both Princeton and Yale outpaced them in the opening 200-yard medley relay by over a second. With the Tigers continuing to widen their lead, the Crimson desperately fought to make up ground between itself and the Bulldogs.

"We tried to stay focused on ourselves even though the other teams were swimming really fast," said freshmen Sarah Murphy. "Princeton's presence was certainly there, but we concentrated on continuing to do our best."

Murphy's concentration paid off, as she led the sole 1-2 Crimson finish of the meet, finishing the 100-yard butterfly in a time of 58.06 seconds with sophomore Pia Chock only a few tenths of a second behind her. Both were well ahead of Princeton and Yale's best performances.

"The fly event was a huge boost for the team," said sophomore Kristin Hennings. "Sarah and Pia swam amazingly well and we used their swims to get ourselves going."

After winning the first relay and the first individual event, Princeton clearly distanced itself against the other two teams, leaving Harvard and Yale to battle amongst themselves. Harvard had its hands full, as the Yale team shaved and tapered for the weekend while Harvard continues to train for the Ivy Championships.

"We just knew we had to beat Yale," Murphy said. "Because they shaved and were swimming really fast, we knew everything we did had to be perfect, especially some of the little things like starts, turns and finishes.

"Throughout the meet we closely watched the score against Yale," Murphy continued. "We knew all of the little things would count because the meet was so tight, and winning close races was one of our main focuses."

The Crimson also found some much-needed points out of the pool, as its divers out-flipped the competitors. In fact, the only win against Princeton besides the 100 butterfly come with senior co-captain Courtney Swain's eye-opening three-meter diving effort.

Swain kept the Tigers, traditionally the most dominant divers in the Ivy League, at bay with one ripped dive after another. Princeton's strongest diver, freshmen Erin Lutz, could not match Swain's 273.30-point effort despite an intense rally, coming within a single point of the win. And sophomore Ali Shipley chimed in with a third place result to further the Crimson's lead over Yale.

The Bulldogs would not go away quietly, however. Senior co-captain Kate Ivers led the Yale contingent with three individual wins against some of Harvard's strongest events--the 100-yard, 200-yards and 500-yard freestyles. Adding to these wide-ranging freestyle victories, Ivers would certainly play an important role in the 400-yard freestyle relay, which concluded the meet.

The Harvard-Yale battle remained within twenty points throughout the meet. Since the tallies were so close, the threat of Ivers leading a last minute surge to take the meet remained a possibility for Yale until it was nearly over. In fact, there wasn't any breathing room until the Crimson dominated the 200-yard breaststroke with a 1-2-3 win over Yale by junior Alexis Todor, sophomore Karen Milkosky and freshman Liz Baxter, respectively.

"The breaststrokers were incredible," Hennings said. "We needed those points so badly, and they gave us a lot of confidence going into the final few events of the meet."

The points from the 1-2-3 finish proved an essential component in Harvard's victory over Yale, as Yale's final relay touched the wall first, which would have won the contest had Todor, Milkosky and Baxter not dominated the 200-yard breaststroke only moments before.

With all of these individual efforts, the Crimson managed to stave off a smooth Bulldog attack and leave no doubt that it plans on at least maintaining last season's third-place position at this year's Ivies later this month.