Ivy League Championships: Princeton Leads After Day Two

PRINCETON, New Jersey, February 29. HEAD coach Susan Teeter has coached championship teams and experienced great swims throughout her successful tenure at Princeton. So for her to be moved to tears during Friday night's very successful second day of the 2008 Ivy League Swimming & Diving Championships, you know something special had to happen.

Are you familiar with Lisa Hamming? She's been a team leader and consistent league scorer for Princeton ever since she stepped on campus. The two things she hasn't been is an Ivy League champion and an NCAA competitor.

In one fell swoop, she accomplished both, and it left Teeter in tears.

"Not too many swims make me do that," Teeter said after Hamming won the 400 IM in an NCAA A-cut time of 4:15.11 during Friday's second championship session of the 2008 Ivy meet. "I am just so happy because of the work she has put in and the commitment she has made to the team. Everybody has been talking about this race since yesterday. Everybody in the stands wanted it. The team wanted her to get it done."

Hamming was one of six Princeton victors in eight events. Another was classmate Brett Shiflett, who is putting an exclamation point on her brilliant Princeton career this weekend. The Tigers will enter Saturday with a meet-best 1108.5 points, while second-place Harvard has 988 points.

"They're swimming out of their minds right now," Teeter said. "They are so excited and so genuinely happy for each other. It's really what being a team and being a family is all about."

The good news started even before the championship session began, as Princeton placed three divers in Saturday's three-meter championship finals. Carolyn Littlefield, Katie Giarra and Charlotte Jones each finished in the top five in preliminaries and will assure Princeton a solid point total in that event.

Princeton opened the second session with a second-place finish in the 200 medley relay. The team of Meredith Monroe, Alicia Aemisegger, Justina DiFazio and Megan Waters finished in 1:43.10, half of a second behind Columbia's winning team.

The run of wins began in the 1000 free, and it was ignited by Aemisegger, the reigning Ivy League Championships Swimmer of the Meet. The sophomore Olympic hopeful made it 5-for-5 all-time at the Ivy Championships by winning in a Princeton-, DeNunzio- and meet-record time of 9:33.43. She won the event by more than 15 seconds, while teammates Ellen Gray (9:53.49), Monika Friedman (9:56.46), Nicole McAndrew (9:59.12) and Alex Wiley (10:01.45) finished 3-4-5-6, respectively. With five of the top six finishers in the race, the Tigers picked up almost 100 points on Harvard in the team standings.

The emotional high of the night came next, as Hamming routed the field to win the 400 IM. A constant finalist in the championship session throughout her career, Hamming's winning time of 4:15.11 was more than seven seconds faster than anybody in the field and assured her both a spot atop the medal stand and at the NCAA Championships in three weeks at Ohio State.

Friedman, coming off a strong swim in the 1000, bounced back to win the 100 fly in 55.40. Like each of her conference teammates, Friedman posted a lifetime-best swim and gave Princeton a third straight champion.

The fourth went to Shiflett, who set a Princeton-, DeNunzio- and meet-record in the 200 free with a winning time of 1:46.51. It was her second individual win in as many days and her second straight NCAA A-cut time.

"Brett is such a great competitor," Teeter said. "She knows it's her last hurrah, and she decided she was going to give it everything she had. I'm really proud of what she has accomplished this weekend."

Sophomore Courtney Kilkuts won her second title of the meet with a winning time of 1:02.97 in the 100 breast. Kilkuts, who had already earned a spot in NCAAs, won the 200 IM on Thursday. Monroe nearly made it a perfect sweep in the individual events, but her rally in the 100 back fell just short against talented Penn sophomore Sara Coenen. Monroe cut into the deficit over the final 50 yards, but her final time of 55.56 was .04 off of Coenen's pace.

There would still be one more win, and it was a dominant one. The team of Monroe, DiFazio, Shiflett and Aemisegger crushed the school and meet record in the 800 free relay with a winning time of 7:12.53. That time is an NCAA B-cut time, so the foursome will need to wait and see if it is enough to send it to Ohio State.

Special thanks to Princeton for contributing this report.

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