Women’s swimming and diving opened the year strong with consecutive victories against two other Ivy Leage teams. The team resumed its season on Friday at the Percy Uris Natatorium against the Brown Bears, finishing with a 12-point lead for a final score of 156-144. On Sunday, the Lions closed out the weekend in Ithaca, soundly beating Cornell with a result of 169-126.

At the home pool, the Lions (3-2 Ivy) started out the meet by picking up 9 points in the 3-meter diving event, where their divers took second, third, and fourth place. The Bears (2-4 Ivy) were able to just edge out the Lions with their first and fifth-place finishes, enough to earn them 10 points.

In the swimming events, Columbia established dominance right from the start with a win in the 200-yard medley relay. Despite coming in third on the first leg of the race, the Lions pushed hard, managing to eke out the comeback win with a 1:41.17 finish, just nine-hundredths of a second ahead of the relay team from Brown, which finished in second.

Senior freestyler Olivia Jubin claimed Columbia’s first individual win of the day with her top finish in the 200-yard-freestyle, clocking in at 1:49.84. Sophomore breaststroker Ashley Hu picked up another individual top finish in the 100-yard breaststroke, earning the Lions another 9 points. The Bears kept the score close, picking up 9 points of their own by claiming second, third, and fourth in the event.

A consistent point-getter for the Light Blue this season, senior Karen Liu found her first victory of the day in the 200-yard butterfly, with a time of 1:59.20. This is the second time Liu, the first woman to break 2:00.00 at Uris Natatorium, has made this record. Liu finished almost two seconds ahead of the next fastest swimmer, sophomore Allison Martin, who came in at 2:01.04.

The Lions also claimed victory in both freestyle sprints, with sophomore Emily MacDonald dominating in the 50-yard freestyle and the 100-yard freestyle. MacDonald narrowly won the first event with a time of 23.01, clocking in just six hundredths of a second ahead of Brown swimmer Samantha Scott. Her victory of 50.25 in the 100-yard freestyle was even more decisive, finishing 0.85 seconds ahead of Brown swimmer Kelly Dolce.

Meanwhile, diving finished for the day as Columbia picked up 6 points in the 1-meter diving event with the Lions’ divers placing in third, fourth, and fifth.

Hu and Jubin each picked up another individual victory in the 200-yard breaststroke and 500-yard freestyle respectively, each finishing over a second ahead of the next fastest swimmer. In the second to last event of the meet, Liu also picked up another win in the 200-yard individual medley, with a time of 2:01.86.

Two days later, the team dove back into competition in Ithaca, New York, emerging victorious at the end of the meet over Cornell (5-3 Ivy). Not only were the Lions’ swimmers able to finish over 40 points ahead of the Big Red, but they also set pool records in four events.

The Lions began the day with a win in the 200-yard medley relay, earning the team 11 points and establishing a lead over the Big Red. On the last leg of the relay, senior Isabelle Arevalo claimed the fastest split of the event with a time of 22.57. The Columbia relay time also broke the first pool record of the day, speeding past the previous time which had been set by Cornell just two months earlier in November.

With the first individual victory of the meet, Jubin won the 1000-yard freestyle, clocking in at 9:55.38, a time that shattered the pool record. She finished almost a full 25 seconds ahead of the next fastest swimmer, Cornell’s Allie Danko.

From there, Columbia picked up another two event titles in the 100-yard backstroke and the 100-yard breaststroke. Junior Aziza Ganihanova won the former event with a time of 55.55, followed by teammate and first-year Grace Zhou, who took second with 55.87. In the latter event, Hu clocked in at 1:03.29 to earn another individual victory for the Lions.

Liu set the third pool record of the meet with her performance in the 200-yard butterfly, which she securely won with a time of 2:00.56. The previous record, with a time of 2:00.92, was set in 2013 by Caroline Lukins, a fellow Columbian. Her win was followed by MacDonald’s first place finish in the 50-yard freestyle. Soon after, Macdonald also claimed a win in the 100-yard freestyle, clocking in at 50 seconds flat.

Impressively, Liu broke another pool record later in the meet with her win in the 200-yard breaststroke. She finished with a time of 2:16.25, beating the previous record of 2:16.47 set in 2011.

Other individual race winners included sophomore Riley Pujadas in the 200-yard backstroke and Ganihanova in the 500-yard freestyle.

On the diving end, while Columbia was not able to claim a first place win in 3-meter diving or 1-meter diving, the Lions still took home points with finishes in the second, third, and fourth for both events, for a total of 18 points.

The Lions will return to their home pool on Friday, Jan. 20 as they face off against the Princeton Tigers at 5 p.m.