Records continued to fall in Thursday evening's finals at the 2017 Ivy League Women's Swimming & Diving Championships. Three Katherine Moran Coleman Aquatics Center pool records fell in individual events, before Yale broke yet another championship meet record in the 200-yard freestyle relay.
Penn's Virginia Burns captured her third-straight Ivy title in the 500-yard freestyle with a time of 4:42.20, breaking the pool record of 4:43.73 set by Penn's Shelby Fortin in 2014. The Quaker junior became just the fifth three-time Ivy League champion in the event. Burns was followed by the Yale duo of Cailley Silbert (4:46.34) and Olivia Jameson (4:46.69).
Harvard's Meagan Popp (1:58.45) out-touched Yale's Destiny Nelson (1:58.97) to win her second-straight 200-yard individual medley at the Ivy League Women's Swimming & Diving Championships. Popp shaved .29 seconds off the pool record at Brown's aquatics center in the victory, as teammates Sonia Wang (1:59.65) and Daniela Johnson (2:00.65) earned third and fourth place finishes.
Yale's Bella Hindley—who won the 50-yard freestyle, 100-yard freestyle and 200-yard freestyle a year ago—touched the wall in 22.25 to go back-to-back in the 50-yard freestyle in pool record time. Hindley was followed by fellow Bulldog swimmer Kina Zhou (22.43) and Harvard's Mei Lynn Colby (22.72).
Harvard and Yale claimed all eight spots in the one-meter diving final, where Mikaela Thompson bested the field for a second-straight year. Thompson tallied 295.55 points to finish ahead of a trio of Yale divers—Talbott Paulsen (290.55), Lilybet MacRae (284.40) and Hannah Walsh (279.75).
In the night's final event, the 200-yard freestyle relay, Yale continued its relay dominance, dropping 1.29 seconds from its seed time to pace the field. The Bulldogs won all five relay events in 2016 and have now captured the first three of the 2017 Ivy League Women's Swimming & Diving Championships.
Yale (1:29.69) came-from-behind to best Harvard (1:29.87) by .18 seconds to keep its relay streak alive and claim its third championship meet record over the past two days. Brown finished in third place with a time of 1:31.33.
Through seven events, Harvard and Yale have distanced themselves from the rest of the Ivy League field with 560.5 and 555 points, respectively. Princeton sits in third with 323 points, while Brown (288), Columbia (270.5), Penn (267), Cornell (226) and Dartmouth (156) round out the eight-team field.
