Cold weather yields titles, records

Women’s squash repeats as national champions

For the second consecutive year, the Tigers brought home the Howe Cup, the national championship trophy. This year’s team claimed the title on its home courts, defeating Penn 6-3 in the final. This win also avenged the Tigers’ 5-4 loss to Penn during the regular season, their only Ivy League loss on the year. Sophomores Amanda Siebert and Neha Kumar were named first-team All-Americans, while freshman Jackie Moss and sophomore Emery Maine earned second-team All-American honors.

Despite falling to Trinity in the national championship for the third year in a row, the men’s squash team completed the first flawless season in Ivy League history by not dropping a single match to any Ancient Eight opponent. The Tigers’ cumulative record against Ivy opponents over the course of the regular season, which head coach Bob Callahan ’77 casually referred to as “a pretty dominant season,” was a history-making 54-0. Members of the team also garnered numerous individual accolades. Juniors Mauricio Sanchez, Kimlee Wong and Hesham El Halaby, sophomore David Canner and freshman David Letourneau were all named All-Ivy. Sanchez garnered his second consecutive Player of the Year award, while Letourneau was named Rookie of the Year.

Men’s hockey claims outright Ivy title for first time

The men’s hockey team made Princeton history by claiming its first unshared title in school history. The Tigers began and ended their Ivy season with victories over traditional powerhouse Cornell. The first win, a 3-2 victory at Cornell in November, surprised many Princeton fans. But by the final game of the season — a 2-1 win at Baker Rink — the team had proven that its first win was no fluke. Princeton compiled a 10-1 record against Ivy opponents on its way to a No. 2 ranking in the ECAC Hockey League, the highest finish in school history.

Women’s swimming strokes away with third consecutive Ivy League championship

Winning its eighth title in nine years, the women’s swimming and diving team capped an undefeated regular season with yet another Ivy crown. Along the way, the team set eight school records and had 11 athletes named to the All-Ivy first and second teams. After winning every swimming event at the annual Harvard-Yale-Princeton meet and claiming more than half the individual titles at the Ivy championships, the team heads to nationals as one of the three undefeated programs in the nation.

The general consensus going into the Ivy League championships was that sophomore Alicia Aemisegger was the best swimmer in the league and that few were up to the task of challenging her. As it turns out, no one in the history of the Ivy League was up to that challenge. Aemisegger — who has set seven individual records in her first two years at Princeton — won all three of her individual events at the Ivy League championships to improve her record in these events to 6-0 and seized her second consecutive Swimmer of the Meet award.

In the 1,000-yard freestyle, she broke the league record she set last year by four seconds (her nearest competitor was 16 seconds behind). But it was in the 1,650-yard freestyle that she established that history could not offer any competition. Her time of 15 minutes, 58.57 seconds won the race by 20 seconds, and she shattered the previous record of 16:16.94, held by Olympian Christina Teuscher, by 18 seconds.

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Standout junior Doug Lennox capped a strong season with an Eastern Intercollegiate Swimming League title in the 200-yard butterfly. His time of 1:44.36 set a Harvard pool record and qualified him for the Puerto Rican Olympic team in the event. Lennox will try to improve uon this performance at the NCAA championships this weekend.

Maag breaks long-standing record

Junior Michael Maag broke the 17-year-old school record in the 3,000-meter run in seven minutes, 56.40 seconds. Only a week later, Maag came within fractions of a second of breaking one of the greatest barriers in sports — the famed four-minute mile. Maag crossed the line in 4:00.43.

The women’s track team won the indoor track title for the first time since 1998. The team defeated six-time defending champion Cornell on the strength of many strong individual performances.