No. 25 Harvard won the team championship, held at the Nassau County Aquatics Center in East Meadow, N.Y, with a score of 1,583.5 points, while Yale (1,038 points) edged out Penn (948) and Columbia (916) for third place. Dartmouth (630), Brown (627) and Cornell (494.5) rounded out the field.
Princeton, the three-time defending champion, started the opening session on Thursday night with a roaring performance in the 200-yard freestyle relay, out-touching Columbia by one-hundredth of a second. But five teams — including Princeton — were disqualified, allowing third-place finisher Harvard to clean up in points.
Junior Alicia Aemisegger kicked off the individual events for the Tigers with an impressive performance in the 500-yard freestyle, picking up a new Princeton record and her third championship title in the event.
Junior Courtney Kilkuts also became a three-time Ivy League champion with a commanding victory in the 200-yard individual medley, finishing more than half a second ahead of the field. She was followed by freshman Jillian Altenburger, who dropped more than two seconds in the final heat to finish third for the Orange and Black.
Sophomore Megan Waters kept the momentum going for the Tigers in the 50-yard freestyle, turning a 23.34-second performance, good enough for second place. Senior co-captain Justina DiFazio clocked in at 23.61 for seventh place.
The divers also got the job done in the first night of competition, placing three in the A final and three in the B final competitions. Senior Katie Giarra set a school record in the one-meter event with a score of 312.05, picking up another individual championship for the Tigers.
An impressive team performance in the 400-yard medley relay capped the first night of competition, where Princeton set a University and Ivy League record with a time of 3:40.99, almost two seconds faster than last year’s winning time. Nevertheless, the Tigers were still behind going into the second night of competition, largely because of the depth of the Crimson contingent.
Princeton continued its dominance in the relay events, posting another University and Ivy League record in the 200-yard medley relay with a 1:41.62. The performance by the team of Waters, Kilkuts, Aemisegger and DiFazio was good enough for an NCAA B-cut and to hold off a charging Columbia squad by half a second.
A talented Harvard distance squad, however, managed to take control of the meet, with a sweep of the first three positions in the 1,000-yard freestyle, while Princeton placed only two swimmers in the top 10.
Aemisegger clinched her second individual title of the meet and eighth in her college career in the 400-yard IM, posting the only NCAA A-cut time of the meet as well as an Ivy League Championship record time. Still, the Crimson placed four in the top eight in the event to continue building on its lead in the team competition.
Altenburger made a strong showing in her first Ivy League Championship, dueling Harvard sophomore Kate Mills in the 200-yard freestyle. Altenburger held the lead at the halfway point, but Mills managed to negative split the last two 50-yard segments to outsprint Altenburger to the finish. Both picked up NCAA B-cut times and finished nearly two seconds ahead of the field.
Kilkuts, the defending champion in the 100-yard breaststroke, met up against Yale junior Susan Kim in one of the last Friday night events. The two have competed against one another over the last three years for Ivy League supremacy in the breaststroke events. Kim outsplit Kilkuts in the final 50 yards to clock in an Ivy League record time of 1:02.05, while Kilkuts finished second with a personal season-best time of 1:02.69.
Waters, who has been the go-to backstroker for the Tigers this year, fought an extremely close battle against Harvard’s Katy Hinkle in the 100-yard backstroke. Waters clocked in a faster final 50 yards, but she ran out of time and was edged out by Hinkle by a mere one-hundredth of a second.
Despite the great performances, Princeton would come into the final day of competition 200 points behind and with a lot of ground to make up.
Aemisegger continued to dominate in the third night of competition, setting a new Ivy League and Princeton record in the 1,650-yard freestyle.
In the three-meter event, Princeton divers took four spots in the top eight, more than any other team in the field. Giarra took control and defeated Columbia senior Shannon Hosey to take first place with 332.35 points.
The Tigers came together in the final event to cap off the three-day weekend in the 400-yard freestyle relay, topping Harvard by more than a second to finish on a high note.
Having finished their Ivy League schedule, the Tigers will begin preparing for the NCAA championships held later this month.
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