It looks like this year may not be more of the same for the Harvard women’s swimming and diving team.
Despite winning only seven of 15 contested events, the Crimson upset traditional Ivy swimming power Brown 170-130 on Friday in Providence. For each of the past four seasons, Harvard has finished behind both Princeton and Brown in the Ivies.
“We are so excited to have beaten them finally,” said co-captain Jane Humphries. “And its a huge feat to beat them in their pool because their fans are psycho.”
The Harvard senior swimmers dyed their hair crimson in a show of school spirit to motivate the underclassmen.
While the victory for the Crimson certainly is not equivalent to winning the Ivy Championship, it may forecast greater success later on down the road. The Crimson has made a crack in the glass ceiling that has pinned the team in third place or worse for the past few years.
“One of the things that our coach was pointing out was that it’s not the end of our season,” said co-captain Rachael O’Beirne. “And we have a lot of things that we still need to accomplish if our goal is to win Ivies.”
Harvard (3-0, 3-0 Ivy) lost both the 200-yard medley relay and 400-yard freestyle relay to Brown (0-1, 0-1) but captured enough of the top spots in individual events for the victory.
“Depth is our best asset,” Humphries said. “It came down to the best team, not the team with the best individual swimmers.”
In particular, strong efforts in the butterfly, breaststroke and individual medley enabled the Crimson to come out on top.
Freshman Jane Evans captured first place in three races for the second meet in a row.
“Jane is a crucial component for our team,” Humphries said. “She is very nonchalant about it.”
In the 200-yard butterfly, Evans led a Harvard sweep of spots one through three with a time of 2:04.31. Right behind were junior Kate Nadeau at 2:04.58 and sophomore Whitney Henderson at 2:08.39.
Evans next took the 200-yard breaststroke for the second consecutive week in a time of 2:23.56, edging out co-captain Rachael O’Beirne, who finished second in 2:24.54 and junior Erica DeBenedetto, who clocked in at 2:27.20 to round out the top three.
In the individual medley, Evans finished her day in fine form, taking first in a time of 2:07.77, nearly two seconds ahead of Humphries, who finished second in 2:09.75.
Complementing her third place finish in the 200- breaststroke, DeBenedetto captured first in the 100-yard breaststroke in a time of 1:06.51. Finishing two spots behind was O’Beirne, who touched in at a time of 1:07.14.
Read more in Sports
Bugging Out About the Wonders of Squashing