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To give insight on what the 2025-26 holds for the Crimson, the men’s and women’s swim and dive teams participated in a scrimmage against MIT and Northeastern on Friday. With both teams posting a strong performance across all categories, the teams look forward to the start of their official season to begin within the next few weeks.

Men’s Swimming and Diving

Harvard’s Men’s Swimming and Diving is positioned to have a strong 2025-26 season. The team finished last season with a record of 7-2 and second overall at the Ivy League Championships, just behind Princeton. This Friday, the Crimson participated in a scrimmage at MIT, and had strong performances all around.

The scrimmage offers the Crimson an opportunity not only to get back in the swing of competition in preparation for their upcoming season, but also to see what has been working well in practice and areas they would like to improve on even more.

“From our perspective, we do a lot of training leading up to the meet without any competition. So the scrimmage serves two functions,” said Head Coach Kevin Tyrrell. “One is to try to get guys used to competing again. And, the second is it really gives myself and our staff, both on a swimming and diving standpoint, an idea of what we should be working on moving forward.”

“Because we could think something’s working really well in practice, but if it isn’t showing up in a meet, then we have to make adjustments,” he added.

This season Tracey Bird, the assistant diving coach last year, has taken on a new role as the head diving coach, and at the scrimmage this weekend, the Crimson saw a lot of improvement in diver performance.

“I think I saw a lot of progress in terms of execution on the small stuff, which makes up everything in diving,” Tyrrell said.

Looking ahead to the rest of the season, the Crimson is excited for its first meet against the University of Massachusetts on November 7th and hoping to build momentum going into its first Ivy League meet of the season against Cornell and Dartmouth on Nov. 14th.

Women’s Swimming and Diving

Harvard’s Women’s Swimming and Diving heads into the 2025-26 season with an undefeated season last year, with a dual record of 10-0. The Crimson was able to showcase a little taste of what’s to come in the upcoming season with the scrimmage against MIT and Northeastern University.

The Crimson swept the charts this weekend, securing victories against both schools. Whether it was relay, diving, or freestyle, Harvard placed its name on the top of the list. The women were able to garner first place in all categories except the 200 yard freestyle relay, where they came in a close second with only .35 seconds splitting the scoreboard.

The final score that closed the weekend for the Crimson was 238-61 against MIT and 223-75 against Northeastern as the team exhibited a dominating performance this past Friday.

With the momentum of the scrimmage pushing it, the Crimson now look forward to its first meet of the season against Brown University on Oct. 31st. The meet against the Bears will mark the beginning of several Ivy League meets with Nov. 15th marking the date against Dartmouth and Cornell and Colombia waiting on Nov. 21st.

—Staff writer Tiffany Oh can be reached at tiffany.oh@thecrimson.com.