Jan. 26, 2008

Final Stats

ANNAPOLIS, Md. - The Navy women's swimming and diving team won the last five events of the meet to record a dramatic 151-149 victory over Penn, Saturday afternoon at Lejeune Hall.

The Mids closed the regular season with a 13-1 record, a mark that ties the 1987-88 team for the most wins and the best record in Navy history. The win also was the first for Navy over Penn in eight years.

"The team has been training really well," said Navy head swimming coach John Morrison. "We said we had to go out and make something exciting happen to win today. This is a great win for our senior class to end their dual meet careers with."

Navy won the opening three events of the meet to jump out to a 33-22 lead. After the Mids won the opening 200 medley relay (2:01.33), Tara Chapmon (So., Virginia Beach, Va.) posted a time of 9:11.51 to win the 800 free and Allison Ranzau (Fr., Alpharetta, Ga.) followed with a clocking of 2:04.87 to win the 200 free.

The Quakers not only won the next three events -- the 100 backstroke, the 100 breaststroke and the 200 butterfly - they also scored three swimmers in each event to take to 67-45 advantage.

Penn's lead was sliced to 80-70 at the first break when Navy's Thuy-Mi Dinh (So., Anaheim, Calif.) won the 50 free (26.05) and Katie Griffin (Sr., Ellicott City, Md.) posted a score of 277.20 to win the one-meter diving event.

Dinh came back right after the break to win the 100 freestyle with a time of 57.42 to pull Navy to within three points at 86-83. Penn, however, responded with back-to-back wins in the 200 backstroke and 200 breaststroke to take a 115-92 lead.

The three events going into the final break in the meet saw Chapmon place first (4:26.12) and Ranzau second in the 400 free, Kelly Zahalka (Jr., Richmond, Va.) won the 100 fly (1:04.94) by five-hundredths of a second, then Griffin won the three-meter springboard with a score of 321.90.

The two wins on the day allowed Griffin to end her senior season with a perfect 28-0 record and improve her two-year record to 49-1.

Zahalka won the last individual event of the meet, the 200 individual medley, with key points being scored for Navy when Tessa Snow (Fr., Hamlin, N.Y.) nplaced fourth and Natalie Albertson (Fr., St. Paul, Minn.) edged Penn's Ainsley Cookingham for fifth place -- and one point -- by six-hundredths of a second.

Penn held a 145-138 lead heading into the final event, the 400 free relay, which meant Navy had to win the race and place either second or third to win the overall meet.

The Penn teams were in both first and third place after the opening 100 meters, as well as after the second and third 100 meters. The Quakers held a two-second lead for first place and a nearly four-second advantage over the Mids for third place as the last set of swimmers hit the water. The last 100 meters became a battle between Dinh and Penn's Sara Coenen for first place, with Chapmon and Penn's Megan Barron fighting it out for third place.

In the race for first, Dinh closed to within seven tenths of a second of Coenen after 50 meters, then she recorded a 29.78 over her last lap of the pool to Coenen's 30.70 to give the Mids the overall victory by five-hundredths of a second (3:55.77-3:55.82).

While Dinh's rally was impressive, perhaps even more so was Chapmon's effort. Down by 3.88 seconds when she first entered the water, Chapmon immediately shaved 1.48 seconds of her deficit off after her opening 50 meters. She then came home in a final time of 30.35, with Barron posting a clocking of 32.83, to secure third place by eight tenths of a second (4:02.18-4:02.26) and give Navy the overall victory.

"We talked during the last break about us needing to finish races faster," said Morrison. "That was something we were not doing early in the meet.

"Thuy-Mi and Tara had great closing strokes in the relay. Thuy-Mi is swimming with so much confident right now, and Tara has the guts of a champion."

"This was the most exciting second half to a meet of my career," said Navy team captain Kristin Lowd. "I am incredibly proud of everyone on the team. We battled through injuries and illnesses and a challenging week of practices to pull this meet out."

Navy will compete in the Navy Invitational Feb. 2 in Lejeune Hall, then will turn its full attention toward winning its second-straight Patriot League title Feb. 21-23 here in Annapolis.