The Harvard women’s swimming and diving team took a break from Ivy League competition this weekend to compete at the Georgia Invitational in Athens, Ga. and prove that it can hang with the best.

The squad finished fifth with 316 points behind West Virginia (413), Northwestern (557), Virginia (906) and top-ranked Georgia, who won with 1,180 points.

“It’s always a great experience to go down there and race with some great teams that have been at the top of the NCAA for the past years,” co-captain Lindsay Hart said. “Everyone swam really well—a lot better than last year.”

The Invitational not only gave the Crimson a look at fresh competition, but also simulated conditions that the team encounters at most championship meets. Swimmers competed over three days, with preliminary swims in the morning and finals in the evening.

“Most of our meets are just one afternoon,” said sophomore Alexandra Clarke, who added that Harvard was looking “to get a three-day meet before the [Ivy League] Championship meet which is three days as well.”

Clarke was the top individual performer of the weekend for the Crimson. She rewrote her own school record in the 1,650-yard freestyle, which she set last year as a freshman at the Ivy League Championships.

“I was really happy with the swim because I had knee surgery in August,” she said of the surprising result.

The sophomore touched the wall in second place in a time 16:18.60, besting her previous record of 16:19.67. The time was also good enough for an NCAA “A” cut, ensuring her spot at the NCAA Championships in March.

“If you make it once, you automatically get to go to the meet,” Clarke said of the qualification. “It makes it so that now I can just train and focus on the end of the season instead of being nervous about trying to make the meet.”

Freshmen Kate Mills and Katherine Pickard also found some success in the NCAA circuit, both hitting “B” cuts in the 200-yard butterfly.

Mills placed sixth in the event with a time of 2:01.38 and Pickard touched the wall in 10th in 2:02.35. A “B” cut is not an automatic qualification for the Championship, but is instead dependent on the times of the rest of the field in that event.

Co-captains Hart and Jaclyn Pangilinan also turned in individual success to help lead their team to its fifth place finish.

Hart won the B final of the 200-yard backstroke in 2:00.93, which narrowly missed the “B” cut and would have placed her sixth in the A final. She had grabbed an eighth place finish in the 100-yard backstroke earlier in the weekend.

Pangilinin turned in the top Harvard performance on Saturday, placing sixth in the 100-yard breaststroke in 1:04.18.

In the 200-yard breaststroke, senior Meaghan Colling missed the NCAA “B” by just 0.05 seconds, turning in a solid 2:18.26 performance.

The top relay performances for the Crimson came from the 200-yard medley and 400-yard freestyle squads.

Hart and Colling teamed up with freshmen Katy Hinkle and Ali Slack to finish sixth in the 200-yard medley in 1:46.52. Colling, Hinkle, Slack and freshman classmate Laura Murray then swam Harvard to another sixth-place finish in the 400 free relay to conclude the meet.

For the dive contingent of the Crimson’s roster, the weekend meant a trip to Princeton, N.J. to compete at the Big Al Invitational.

Divers from Princeton, Penn State, Rider University, Brown, and University of Pittsburgh-AM also dove in the event, which gave Harvard’s young roster a chance to compete under new conditions.

“It was an amazing opportunity for the freshman to get exposure to the meet format for an invite and to understand how to dive under those circumstances,” senior diver Samantha Papadakis said. “Those are the circumstances that we dive under during [the Ivy League Championships].”

Papadakis won the three-meter event with 276.05 points and took second in the one-meter with 275.50 points.

Freshmen Marissa Ash placed fifth in the three-meter with an impressive score of 249.95 points. The Class of 2011 also impressed in the one-meter dive the following day, capturing ninth, 10th, and 11th place.

The Crimson now has over a month off before resuming Ivy League competition against Penn on Jan. 12.

“We go back into some harder training and we go on a training trip in the Florida Keys over winter break,” Hart said. “We’re looking forward to some good training to prepare for our meets before we rest at the end of the season.”

—Staff writer Rebecca A. Compton can be reached at compton@fas.harvard.edu.