Yale Athletics

Yale Women’s Swim and Dive scored a convincing victory (178-122) against Columbia last Friday. The Bulldogs won their third meet of the season, remaining undefeated so far. 

“The team has done a great job staying together and being prepared to compete,” team coach Jim Henry told the News. “The team is resilient and ready to race at all times, and it shows.”

In preparation for the meeting, team members adopted various warm-up strategies. Some adjusted their bodies to swimming mode with a casual 500-1000-yard swim. Some, like backstroke swimmer Mabel Koff ’28, used music to “get into the zone.” 

Starting strong, the relay quartet of Devyn Sargent ’28, Jessey Li ’26, Alex Massey ’25 and Sara Plunkett ’27 took the first swim event of the meet by finishing the 200 medley relay with 1:41.40, their third win in the 200 medley this season. 

In diving, it was Hayden Henderson ’25 who prevailed in both the 1m and 3m events, with a double 300+ performance (301.95, 302.10). In the 1m dive, Lily Horenkamp ’26 (291.45) finished second, ahead of third place by over 30 points. The Bulldogs also swept the 3m dive, with Henderson, Grace Wu ’28 (289.95) and Horenkamp (261.83) taking the top 3 spots. 

Henderson emphasized the importance of “being in the moment,” with the mental aspect being a significant part of diving. 

“Before each dive, before I get on the board, … I’m focusing on that one dive and not on how others are doing, along with forgetting the dives I did before; those are in the past, I can’t do anything about them now,” Henderson said. 

Competing at an away meet didn’t stop the team from creating vivacious energy by cheering each other on and shouting signature chants. Koff told the news that she was impressed with the team, and she thought the Bulldogs “did a really great job with the energy.” 

“Bulldog Backstroke,” one of many famous hype chants of the swim team, delivered an enchanting performance, with Sargent, Quinn Murphy ’25 and Plunkett sweeping the top three spots of the 100 backstroke. In the 200 backstroke, it was Koff who touched the wall first with 1:59.14, taking her third win in the 200 back this season. 

“Everyone was super tough during the races. We got a lot of good hustle points, and seeing everyone work together at our first scored away meet was fun,” team captain Murphy said. 

Though the Lions took the 100 and 200 freestyle events, long distance was all Bulldogs, with Lilly Derivaux ’26 taking both the 500 and 1000 freestyle swims, edging out second place by just over half a second with 10:14.75 in the 1000 and finishing with exactly 5:00.00 in the 500. Yale also dominated in the 400 IM event, with Eunice Lee ’28 and Junseo Kim ’25 finishing within a second of each other (4:24.91, 4:25.89) to take the top two spots in that event. 

Several members of the winning 200 medley relay team also demonstrated a commanding performance in the individual events. Massey took both the 100 and 200 butterfly swim for the Bulldogs, finishing in 56.00 flat in the 100 and 2:02.76 in the 200. After swimming the breaststroke leg of the relay, Li also clinched the 100 breaststroke with 1:01.83. Both Massey’s 200 butterfly and Li’s 100 breaststroke times were more than two seconds faster than the runner-up. 

For their next meet, the swimmers will “suit up” for the first time this season by wearing a special swimsuit that will help reduce resistance in the pool. 

“I’m excited to see what we can do as a team and individually. Suited up and tapered, I think it’s going to be a great meet, and we’ll put up some great times,” Koff said. 

The Bulldogs will return to the pool for the Ohio Invitational from Nov. 21 to 23.