Harvard vs Penn (Women’s Dual Meet)
- Saturday, January 22, 2022
- Blodgett Pool, Boston, MA
- SCY (25 Yards)
- Results
Team Scores
- Harvard – 187
- Penn – 113
Harvard hosted Penn for a women’s dual meet on Saturday, posting a dominant 187-113 win over their conference rival. The Crimson won both relays as well as 9 of 14 individual events to establish their 74-point margin of victory.
Lia Thomas picked up two of Penn’s wins on the day, taking the 100 and 200 freestyle. Racing the 200 first, Thomas swam a 1:47.08 to touch first after battling Harvard’s Felicia Pasadyn through the first half of the race. Pasadyn led Thomas by a hair at the 100 mark, flipping in 53.11 to Thomas’ 53.15. Thomas made her move on the 3rd 50, however, splitting 26.91 to Pasadyn’s 27.67. Pasadyn ultimately finished in 1:48.44, just one second off her lifetime best of 1:47.33. Thomas went on to win the 100 free in 50.55, using a 25.54 split on the 2nd 50 to take the lead.
Thomas is a transgender swimmer, who spent her first 3 seasons at Penn on the men’s team. After a record-breaking first semester on the women’s team this fall, Thomas has often been the center of the controversial debate over the rules surrounding transgender athletes. Last week, the NCAA Board voted to support a sport-by-sport approach to transgender athlete inclusion, wherein determining rules for testosterone thresholds will be left up to national and international governing bodies for each sport. The NCAA announced these new policies would be in effect for the 2022 championships.
Per the new NCAA guidelines, when governing bodies don’t establish a threshold for testosterone levels (which is currently the case), the November 2021 International Olympic Committee policy becomes the default. However, the November IOC policy didn’t include a testosterone threshold, and instead shifted the onus of creating such thresholds onto the national governing bodies. So in effect, there isn’t a clear policy for transgender athletes in swimming, and there won’t be, until USA Swimming or FINA announces a new policy.
Pasadyn would go on to claim victory in the 400 IM, clocking a 4:14.92 to win by 10 seconds. She used her freestyle prowess to propel her home, splitting a quick 58.11 on the final 100 of the race.
Harvard freshman Mandy Brenner split 21.89 on 2nd leg of the Harvard ‘A’ 200 free relay according to the results. It appears the time isn’t legitimate, however, as fellow first-year Molly Hamlin led the relay off in 25.48, despite splitting 25.17 on the first 50 of the individual 100 free earlier in the meet. Moreover, Brenner split 22.99 on the anchor leg of the 200 medley relay, and won the individual 50 free in 23.66. Harvards 200 free relay won in 1:34.48.
Harvard was absolutely dominant on the diving boards, claiming the top 6 finishes in 1-meter, and the top 7 divers in 3-meter.
Before anyone pretends that Lia Thomas beating cis women in a race is some outrageous feat that would never happen if Thomas was a “real woman,” remember that Katie Ledecky just beat Zane Grothe, a cis man and former US Open record holder in a race on the same day
I could stand a couple days without seeing a Lia Thomas headline, especially in an article that doesn’t have very much to do with her. How about just leaving it at Harvard beating Penn?
more outrage = more attention = more clicks
Like it or not, swimswam is still a news site
Harvard hosted Penn for a women’s dual meet on Saturday, posting a dominant 187-113 win over their conference rival.
simpyisconfused
Those 1000 times look very impressive, 9:23, 9:26, 9:32 on the way through to the mile. Penn has a great distance program going.
Edit: It appears those times are actually taken at the 950 mark.
Lmao yeah, those would be on pace for like 15:27 for the fastest and 15:43 for the slowest. Not sure how you mess that up on the official results. It wouldn’t have changed the finish order, but that’s a pretty glaring error.
can swimswam maybe highlight some of the other penn girls instead of only talking about Lia? im sure she would appreciate not being the headline of every article involving her team, and the only penn swimmer talked about is Lia. I know she is what gets the clicks but Thomas is not the only swimmer doing wel
Didn’t one of the Penn swimmers say something like “we aren’t very good at swimming” to OutKick?
Why do we want to read about swimmers who “aren’t very good at swimming”?
Lia Thomas DOMINATES Harvard Women’s Team, SHATTERING Sarah Sjostrom’s world mark of 51.71 with a BLISTERING 50.55 time
Wut
It’s a joke based on a Daily Mail article that seemed to think Lia Thomas had broken the WR in her races, not realizing that we Americans swim our college meets in yards.
Ironically, in an article written by two Americans.
That article told me everything I needed to know about The Daily Mail’s coverage of this story.
Hearing that the author wrote that headline makes me think that they were doing it for clicks or they don’t know anything about competitive swimming or maybe both.
*Grabs popcorn*
We dont have to make this comment on every controversial article.
Considering the stakes and emotional toll this is taking on the parties involved here, making the tired, “haha” popcorn grabbing comment is just tone deaf. There’s nothing funny about any of this.
The headline should read “Harvard dominates Penn”
End of story.
Agreed.
At this point if you add her name, you get way more clicks. You would write it the same as SwimSwam if you owned the site.