Competing in their first meet against multiple opponents this season at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Winter Invitational last weekend, the men's and women's swimming and diving teams were done in by the host school's dominance.The men's team finished in third place out of six teams with 554.5 points, while the women's squad finished in last with 361 points, both well behind the first-place Engineers, who finished with 1,082.5 points on the men's side and 910.5 on the women's side.

Both MIT squads dominated the competition. Their men's team had a first-place finisher in 17 of the 18 swimming events, while their women's team placed swimmers in the top five of all but two of the swimming events.

Although the Judges were nowhere close to the Engineers on the men's side, they still managed to achieve coach James Zotz's goal of third place. Led by James Liu's '10 three top-three finishes, the Judges defeated fourth-place Colby College by 36.5 points.

"[Liu] had a very good meet and performed very well while competing in events that were very close to each other with very little rest in between," Zotz said.

Liu's best finish came in the 100-yard butterfly event, as his time of 53.48 seconds was less than one second behind MIT rookie Toomas Stepp.

Liu also finished third in the 100-yard freestyle event with a time of 48:12 and was also third in the 200-yard butterfly with a time of 2:02.13.

The Judges' only other top-three finish came in the 800-yard freestyle relay, when Liu teamed with Jesse Hershman '10, Mike Rubin '09, and Bobby Morse '08 to finish third with a time of 7:25.24.

On the women's side, the Judges score of 361 placed them 180 points behind fifth-place Colby College.

Zotz said the Judges' goal was to finish in fourth place, but that they struggled without some key contributors.

"We had two women who did not compete due to illness and two who were not 100 percent and did compete," Zotz said. "Even if our team was 100-percent healthy, our goal of fourth place was a very big challenge."

The Judges still had several strong individual performances. Rachel Sawicki '10 had two top-three finishes, including a second-place finish in the 200-yard butterfly with a time of 2:15.01.

"I am very confident that [Sawicki] would have won the 200 butterfly event if she had not swam the 200 breaststroke roughly 15 minutes earlier," Zotz said.

Hollis Viray '10 led the Judges with 67 individual points in her nine events, leading the team to top-10 finishes in both the 800- and 400-yard freestyle relay.

"This [last-place finish] isn't discouraging at all," she said, "If anything we're excited because we had some really good races, so we can carry out that momentum throughout the season."

The Judges host Tufts University in their final meet of the semester Sunday.