Yale Athletics

The Bulldogs started the year off strong, defeating both the University of Pennsylvania and Dartmouth in the first tri-meet of the season with large margins (Penn, 194-106; Dartmouth 222-78). Their strong performance was in no small part thanks to their hard work over winter break. 

Escaping the cold of New Haven, the swim and dive team spent much of their winter break at a 10-day intensive training in Puerto Rico. Being away from school, team members agreed that being able to focus on swimming full-time was a fulfilling experience. 

“The Puerto Rico practices created a very strong bond within the team because we were spending so much time together,” Mabel Koff ’28 told the News. “We put in a lot of hard work and cheered each other on, and it is rewarding to look back at the end and see how much we achieved.”

However, the absence of school also meant the practices were more intense. In addition to waking up early every morning, the team swam in 50-meter Olympic-sized pools, which are more than twice as long as the 25-yard pools used for their standard practices. 

There were also several back-to-back “double practice” days, where the team would practice twice a day for consecutive days, something usually not done at Yale practices. 

“Penn/Dartmouth was definitely a challenging meet because we were coming straight off of a training trip so everyone was really tired. But I think the team performed really well even through that exhaustion,” said Morgan Cady ’28.

The Penn/Dartmouth meet marks the first tri-meet of the season, where the three teams would simultaneously swim and dive in each event to triple the excitement. The meet occurred over two days, with diving on the first day and swimming on the second. Although the athletes swam concurrently, scoring was done after the event in a pairwise format, meaning that the matchups Yale-Dartmouth, Yale-Penn and Penn-Dartmouth were scored separately. 

On the first day, the Bulldogs dove headfirst into the lead, with Paige Lai ’26 (297.05), Hayden Henderson ’25 (279.10), Lily Horenkamp ’26 (273.90) and Laurel Jin ’25 (265.35) sweeping the top four spots of the 1-meter dive event. Lai’s score of 274.15 was also enough for second place in the 3-meter dive. 

Building on the strong momentum from the divers, the swimmers continued the winning streak, kicking off day two with a first-place finish in the 200-meter medley. The dynamic quartet of Devyn Sargent ’28, Jessey Li ’26, Alex Massey ’25 and Caroline McCurdy ’26 finished with a time of 1:42.57, prevailing over second place by more than two seconds. 

“We haven’t raced in a long time, so it was just fun to have that energy back on deck again, seeing where we were at after the training trip. And I think we did a good job of racing people and getting our hand on the wall first,” team captain Quinn Murphy ’25 said. 

In the sprints, Li prevailed in the 100 breaststroke (1:02.87) and Massey touched the wall first in the 100 butterfly (55.75). 

The Bulldogs showcased a dominant performance in the mid-distance races. Koff clinched the top spot in the 200-meter IM, and the Elis also swept the top three spots of the 200-meter free, 200-meter butterfly and 200-meter back events. 

In the 200 free, the Bulldogs were led by Koff (1:52.35), Junseo Kim ’25 (1:53.11) and McCurdy (1:54.00). After winning the 100-meter butterfly, Massey also prevailed in the 200-meter butterfly (2:01.72), with Lilly Derivaux ’26 (2:03.80) and Eunice Lee ’28 (2:05.22) rounding out the top three for the 200-meter fly. 

In the 200-meter backstroke, Koff finished first with a sub-two-minute finish of 1:59.04, followed by Sargent (2:02.89) and Murphy (2:03.94).

Closing out the meet with as much energy as they started, the Bulldogs finished strong, with the quartet of McCurdy, Sargent, Lily Neumann ’28 and Massey finishing the 400-meter freestyle relay in 3:29.01 and edging out Dartmouth by just over a second. 

The Bulldogs will have their second tri-meet of the season against Harvard and Princeton from Jan. 31 through Feb. 1.

DAVIS ZONG