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H-Y-P Women's Swimming & Diving Meet Carries Extra Weight This Season
Portions courtesy of Harvard Athletic Communications, Princeton Athletic Communications and Yale Sports Publicity
Ivy League Men's Swimming Top 10 Performance List (through Jan. 30)
Ivy League Women's Swimming Top 10 Performance List (through Jan. 30)
PRINCETON, N.J. - The annual H-Y-P weekend swim meet will take on added meaning this weekend as the men's and women's teams from all three schools come in unbeaten and will likely decide the League's regular season title.
The women's meet will begin Friday at 6 pm and resume again Saturday at 12 noon. The men's meet will begin Saturday at 6 pm and resume Sunday at noon.
Each year, Harvard, Yale and Princeton swim together as a tri-meet for their League regular season meeting. The meet usually has some form of championship ramifications, but this one is even more so.
Entering the weekend's action, the men's teams from Yale, Harvard and Princeton are each 4-0 in league play with one more meet to follow the weekend's action. On the women's side, Harvard is 5-0, while Princeton and Yale are both 4-0 with one more meet to follow. So someone will likely walk away with, at a minimum, a share of the Ivy regular season title on Sunday night.
On the women's side, Harvard or Princeton have won each of the last 14 Ivy League regular season championships after going undefeated in conference competition. The last time a men's regular season title wasn't won by the Crimson or Tigers was in 1997-98 when Brown claimed the regular season dual meet crown.
On the men's side, the last five titles have gone to either Princeton or Harvard with the last title not going to the Crimson or Tigers coming in 2006-07 when Cornell won the regular season dual meet title.
Yale's last women's regular season title came in 1996-97, while the Yale men haven't claimed a regular season crown since 1969-70 when the Ivy League participated as part of the EISL.
On the men's side, Harvard's Chuck Katis owns two of the three NCAA "A" qualifying times in the Ivy this season, recording those in the 100 and 200 breaststroke. Crimson diver Mike Mosca has dominated in one and three-meter diving this year, breaking his own school records in both events.
Princeton's Harrison Wagner and Jeremy
Wong are among the best in the Ivy in the sprints. They
both have recorded NCAA "B" standard times. Wagner has the Ivy's
top time in the 50 free this season at 20.04. Wong has the best 100
free time at 44.16, the .03 ahead of Wagner.
Among the top distance swimmers are Harvard's Mike
Gaudiani, who has the fastest time in the 1000 (9:20.45),
and Princeton's Paul Nolle, who won the 500, 1000
and mile at the 2012 Ivy League Championships.
The Elis are coming off victories over Fordham and Rider on Jan. 26. Yale defeated Fordham 201-97 and Rider 203-93. Sophomores Alwin Firmansyah, Rob Harder and Andrew Heymann each claimed two individual victories. Firmansyah won the 200-yard butterfly and the 200-yard breaststroke. Harder swept the backstroke events, winning both the 100-yard and 200-yard races. Heymann won the 100-yard freestyle and the 100-yard breaststroke.
On the women's side, the trio of Princeton's Lisa Boyce, Yale's Alex Forrester and Harvard's Sara Li could be a fun battle to watch. They make up the top three sprinters in the Ivy this season. Boyce is a four-time individual champion at the Ivy League Championship Meet.
Yale's Eva Fabian has been strong in the long distance swims, recording the second best time in the 500 free behind Harvard's Sherry Liu, and the best marks in the 1000 and 1650. In fact, her 1650 time is 16 seconds better than the next-best mark. Liu, however, has Top 5 times in the 1000 and 1650 this season.
In the end, however, in both meets it will likely come down to depth and the precious last few points to determine who goes home with a share of the Ivy's regular season title.
GoPrincetonTigers.com will have Live Video and Live Results coverage of the meet throughout the weekend.
