Two days of tough competition and dozens of races greeted the men's and women's swimming and diving teams this past weekend at the Wesleyan Invitational. With some strong individual efforts, the men's team finished in second place with 972 points and the women's team finished third with 924.5 points. The hosting Wesleyan teams each took first place, with scores of 1483.5 and 1177 respectively.

Hal Grossman '07 stole the show for the Judges in the freestyle events, finishing first in the 50-yard freestyle and the 200-yard freestyle, and placing in four more.

Grossman had a photo finish in the 50-yard freestyle, tying Wesleyan senior Josh Tanz with a time of 22.39 seconds. He was a tenth of a second away from winning a third event, the 100-yard freestyle, but Grossman said the fatigue of the day's races finally took its course.

"I was tired," he said, "I just swam a mile [before]."

The men's team also dominated the 200-yard breaststroke, with captains Lev Davidson '06 and Matt Lerman '07 finishing in first and second place, respectively.

The men's diving team was led by Ashkan Hamzelou '08, who finished in fourth place in both the one-meter and three-meter platforms.

Davidson said he was pleased with the overall progress the team has been making.

"We looked at this meet as midway point, to see where we are in terms of our training, to see if we needed to change any of our training schedules and to assess how we are doing," Davidson said.

On the women's team, captain Sharon Makowsky '06 streaked to a second-place finish in the 200-yard backstroke and the 200-yard butterfly, and Sarah Evans '06 came in second place in the 100-yard freestyle. Makowsky and Evans also helped the team capture a second-place finish in the 400-yard freestyle relay.

One of the highlights of the women's meet was the diving of Charlotte Rea '08, who leveled the competition with a first-place finish in both the one-meter and three-meter platforms.

Despite the third-place finish, Makowsky stressed that the team saw the meet as a good measuring stick for the rest of the season.

"We had good competition and had three different schools to compete against," she said, "Wesleyan is a really strong team, but they have girls at all levels, same as our team. That was great so there was always someone to race against."

The women's and men's teams resume competition next Sunday at home against Tufts at 12 p.m.