The warmest place to be this weekend was by far the Teagle Hall swimming pool, where both the Cornell men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams were in action against Pennsylvania and Princeton.
The stands at Teagle were nearly full for the men on Saturday afternoon for the battle against its Ivy rivals.
“I would really like to thank the fans who came to the meet. It was loud in there and it really helped us,” head coach Joe Lucia said.
Unfortunately, it was not meant to be for the Big Red, as it fell to both teams, 145-96 to the Quakers, and 187-56 to the Tigers.
“We invested a lot emotionally in to this meet, especially for Penn. We came out to swim, we were just out-manned,” Lucia said.
The highlight for the Red was the two diving events, where senior John Cebulski took both the 1-meter and 3-meter events.
Princeton took all of the swimming events in the meet.
“This week we are getting back to training to get ready for Easterns, where we always beat Penn,” senior tri-captain Christian Sweetser said.
As for the Cornell swimmers, junior John Kenny stood out, finishing third in the 500-yard freestyle and fourth in the 1000-yard freestyle.
“It was the best duel meet in his career,” Lucia said.
It was pretty much the same for the women, as the team also fell to Penn and Princeton, 185-115 and 160-129, respectively.
Once again, sophomore Courtney Tawresey stood out, winning the only event for the Red, taking the 100-yard backstroke in 1:07.52.
“Courtney had a really good swim. A lot of people had good times for where we are in the season,” senior tri-captain Kellee Ngan said.
The women divers were also very impressive, with senior Lisa Dughi placing third in the 1-meter dive and fourth in the 3-meter. Also, sophomore Elizabeth Drury placed third in the 3-meter with a score of 257.15.
For the most part, the women self-admittedly still need to work on their mental game and stay focused during the entire meet.
“Some of us paid a little too much attention to the other teams, rather than concentrating on the aspects of the meet that we can control,” Ngan remarked.
The men will swim against Binghamton on tomorrow at 5:00, and then will be off until January 13 when they travel to New Haven for a double-duel meet against Yale and Navy.
The women will return too action next Saturday for the Penn State Invitational.
——APOLOGY——
Archived article by Josh Vlasto