The Dartmouth women's swimming and diving team wrapped up its season at the Ivy League Championship event with record-setting individual performances. In team competition, the squad matched its regular-season standing, as the Big Green placed seventh out of the Ancient Eight.
Dartmouth amassed 579.5 points over the three-day event, prevailing over Cornell, who scored 532 points. With the win over Cornell, the Big Green's season ended as it began. Dartmouth defeated Cornell in the same pool during a group meet with the Big Red and Harvard in mid-November, thus establishing its seventh place ranking in the Ivy League.
The Big Green women are proud of their final standing, having escaped from the Ivy League cellar and elevating their program to the next tier. Mariah Cunnick '06, the team's co-captain, considers the seventh place finish to be a victory. "I think that this was definitely a win for us. We beat Cornell by a hefty margin, and they beat us one year ago," Cunnick said. Our team's performance, in my opinion, was outstanding,"
However, the true success story of the championship meet lies in the individual and relay performances of the Dartmouth swimmers. The Big Green broke two school records each day of the event for a total of six new records. While the end result of the weekend was quite predictable for the Big Green, the Dartmouth swimmers experienced excitement that they program has not seen in its history.
"We had more top eight finishers than ever, and tons of best times swum, especially Lizzie Rippe ['07], who took down four school records and got second in the league in the 100-yard butterfly," said Cunnick.
On Thursday, Rippe, Cunnick, Laura Hester '09 and Liz Mancuso '08 combined to swim the 200-yard freestyle relay in 1:36.16, breaking the old record by more than a second. The record-setting time was good enough for eighth place in the event. Melissa Kern '07 broke a Big Green record that had stood for eight years. Kern's time of 4:57.75 in the 500-yard freestyle event beat the mark that Gret Duckworth '00 set in 1998 by more than two seconds. Kern's time placed her ninth in the overall field.
Friday's events perpetuated the momentum of Thursday's impressive swims. Kern made waves in the Dartmouth record books in yet another distance event -- the 1000-yard freestyle. Kern did her 40 laps in 10:14.61, breaking her own mark of 10:11.80 that she set as a freshman in 2004. Kern's 2006 time was good for fifth place overall.
As impressive as Kern's accomplishments are, Lizzie Rippe may have been the Big Green's top performer on Friday. Rippe finished second in the overall field in the 100-yard butterfly event, scoring much-needed points for her team en route to setting a school record. Rippe's time in the 100-yard butterfly, 55.59 seconds, bested her previous school record of 56.53 seconds.
Rippe's second place individual finish was the Big Green's best finish in the Ivy Championships since Andrea Hill '97 was the Ivy League Champion of the 200-yard breaststroke event in 1997. Hill's time in that race still stands as a Dartmouth record.
On Saturday morning, Rippe helped to re-write the Big Green all-time record book for a third and fourth time during the weekend. Rippe swam the 100-yard freestyle event in 51.52 seconds, touching in .39 seconds faster than previous Dartmouth record holder Lauren Gilhooly '04.
The Big Green's freestyle success continued, as Rippe, Cunnick, Mancuso and Hester set the 400-yard freestyle relay mark in addition to Thursday's 200-yard relay record. The four racers combined for a time of 3:29.71, beating the previous mark by almost a second and taking fifth place in the race.
While the Dartmouth team is by no means a force in the Ivy League, it has earned the respect of its peers with the progress that it made this season. The team will lose Cunnick, Cary Telander '06 and top diver Kate Brodie '06 to graduation, but the corps of Dartmouth swimmers remains largely in tact. Having left the young program on a successful note, Cunnick is confident that the team will prosper in the near future.
"I think it shows that there's nowhere for us to go but up," said the senior. "If you look at how far we've come since the '06s started, it's phenomenal. We're winning more meets than ever, bettering records that are getting faster and faster, and I think that the amazing performances by our first-year swimmers show the potential that this team has."
