The women’s swimming and diving team lost a close home meet to the University of New Hampshire on Friday before defeating the University of Vermont soundly on the road in its Sunday matinee.
Led by Katy Feng ’14, who accumulated four first place wins for the Big Green, the diving team swept the top three places in both the one-meter and three-meter events at each meet.
The Big Green, which has now won two meets this season, started off by defending its home lanes, but ultimately fell to the Wildcats 166-134. Just two days later, the Big Green traveled to the University of Vermont and dominated the Catamounts on the strength of 12 first-place finishes. The 200.5-99.5 victory was Dartmouth’s first dual-meet win of the season.
“It felt really good because we were able to one-two-three them in so many events,” co-captain Christine Kerr ’14 said. “It was a good confidence booster for the rest of the season. We weren’t worried because we beat them comfortably last year, but you never know.”
Of the 16 total events, the Catamounts only won three — the 100-yard butterfly, 200-yard backstroke and 100-yard freestyle. The Big Green women that raced in the 100-yard freestyle and 100-yard butterfly were out-touched by less than one second. Kendese Nangle ’16 tied UVM sophomore Christa Weaver in the 50-yard freestyle, both reaching the wall in 24.47 seconds.
Despite the strong victory, co-captain Natalia Vecerek ’14 said the team had been hoping to swim faster.
“I think we’re a much stronger team overall,” she said. “It was a hard meet because they don’t have a warm up or warm down pool, so you weren’t able to get in and warm up before your event and had only two laps to cool down.”
Even with this setback, the Big Green still had a little bit of leeway to depart from its traditional line-up.
Mary Van Metre ’14, usually a freestyle sprinter, swam in the breaststroke event.
“She was still able to pull out these longer races and win, so that was pretty amazing,” Kerr said.
Van Metre took first place in both the 100- and 200-yard breastroke. The utility swimmer also led off the 200-yard freestyle relay and anchored the 400-yard medley relay, both of which brought home golds for the Big Green.
This key win came just days after a loss to UNH.
Vecerek said that although the meet with UNH lacks the “high stakes” of the Ivy League schedule, it still is a big meet for the team due to the in-state rivalry.
Though ultimately a loss, the meet was colored by some of the team’s best performances of the season, including a pool record for the 200-yard freestyle relay at 1:36.28, unseating the previous pool record set in 2008 by Princeton at 1:37.01.
“It’s so exciting to hold our own pool record,” Charlotte Kama’i ’16 said. “Even more, we took it away from Princeton, one of our rivals, so that made it honestly so much better.”
Rising star Kama’i anchored for Nangle, Van Metre and Siobhan Hengemuhle ’15. UNH took 11 of the 16 overall first place positions, but wound up just 32 points ahead of the Big Green, which speaks to the depth that the Big Green women bring to the pool.
This strength, Vecerek said, will play out favorably when the team swims against its final Ancient Eight opponent, Columbia University, and in the Ivy League Championships this season.
“We tend to overkill some of the events at Ivies,” she said. “Our sprint group is really deep, and we had five or six make it to the finals at Ivies, whereas you can only put three in at a dual meet.”
The team will host the annual Dartmouth Invitational this weekend in White River Junction before heading to Storrs, Conn., to face the University of Connecticut on Feb. 1.
