While the Dartmouth women's swimming and diving team was not in contention for the top spot at the Ivy League Championships, contested at Princeton's DeNunzio Pool, the women ended the season with their best performances of the season. While there were several quality performances by Dartmouth, the depth of the other schools' teams proved to be too much. The Big Green women finished seventh with a total of 634 points.
The sixth-place team, Brown, was well clear of Dartmouth with 811 points. Host Princeton, the twenty-third ranked program in the country and the regular-season champion with an unblemished Ivy League record, took first place honors with 1,496 points, followed by Harvard with 1,408.5 points.
For the Big Green (4-7, 1-6 Ivy), 10 school meets were shattered on the day, making it the most successful meet for Dartmouth thus far this season.
Melissa Kern '07 and Lizzie Rippe '07, swimming for the Big Green one last time, had their best performances of the year in DeNunzio Pool. Kern set three school records by herself, renewing records in the 500-yard freestyle (4:52.45), 1,000-yard freestyle (9:59.02) and 800-yard freestyle relays (7:38.68).
Kern finished third and fourth in the 500-yard and 1,000-yard freestyle events, respectively, while breaking her own school records and meeting national standards. Her 500-yard swim was an U.S. national qualifying time, and the 1,000-yard swim met the U.S. senior national standard.
The 800-yard relay team of Kern, Emily Pizzichemi '10, Laura Hester '09 and Liz Mancuso '08 finished seventh.
Rippe was also impressive on the day, finishing with two school records. In the 200-yard freestyle relay, the team of Mancuso, Hester, Heather Jankins '09 and Rippe swam 1:35.67 to finish in fifth and break the school record.
In the 200-yard medley relay, Rippe teamed up with Meredith Blank '10, Jankins and younger sibling Carolyn Rippe '10 to break a seventeen-year-old school record with a time of 1:46.06. The time was good for sixth place.
Although not a school record, Rippe's best performance of the meet came in the 100-yard butterfly. She took third in the event, swimming a time of 55:81, which was just a half second off of the winner's time.
The divers had trouble scoring points in both the one-meter and three-meter dives. Julianne Mifflin '08 was the lone Big Green diver to make it past the preliminaries in either event, taking a fourteenth-place finish in the one-meter dive.
Women's swimming and diving head coach Jim Wilson was pleased that his team had its best performance of the year at the Ivy League Championships.
"The Ivy meet is a championship meet, so this is what we train for the whole year and we want it to be our best meet. The regular season doesn't matter as long as we do well at the Ivies. I was pleased with the way our team went out and performed today. Kern was outstanding on the day, as well as Rippe," Wilson said.
The Tigers dominated the meet. A Princeton athlete won both the best swimmer award and best diver award in the championships. Princeton freshman Alicia Amesigger took the best swimmer award.
Amesigger won the 500-yard freestyle in 4:43.50, six seconds better than the next competitor, freshman Alexandra Clarke of Harvard. In the 1,000-yard freestyle, Amesigger came back to win in 9:37.55, 14 seconds better than Clarke, who took second.
The time in the 500-yard freestyle was good for a meet record, and the time in the 1,000-yard freestyle was good for a meet, pool and Ivy League Championship record.
Princeton teammate Katie Giarra, a sophomore diver, won the best diver award. Giarra won both the one-meter springboard dive and the three-meter platform dive with scores of 307.00 and 335.95, respectively. Both scores were well ahead of other competitors.
The Big Green women are not in the position to compete for the Ivy League crown, but the team is on the upswing.
"We finished in the same place as we did last year, but we finished 100 points higher, so we did better in this meet than last year," Wilson added.
The women's swimmers are now finished with their season meets.
The Big Green men (2-10, 0-8 EISL) have the EISL Championship meet from Thursday, Feb. 22 to Saturday, Feb. 24 at Princeton's DeNunzio Pool.
