Publication: A Princeton Companion
Swimming at Princeton got off to a good start in the spring of 1906 with a victory over Yale in that season's only meet. The following year, the 1907 team won every meet in Princeton's first full season, taking the championship of the newly founded Intercollegiate Swimming Association; and a year later the 1908 team won the association's postseason meet to determine individual championships.
Frank Sullivan was coach from 1911 to 1928. His 1912 team defeated Yale but lost to Penn, finishing second in the league. His 1924 team won the league championship, beating Yale twice in close contests, while going undefeated in dual meet competition. The first of the two defeats of the Elis broke their seven-year string of 44 straight intercollegiate victories. Both meets were decided in the final event by Princeton's victorious 200-yard relay team, whose anchorman, John H. Hawkins '26, won the national collegiate championship in the 440-yard freestyle the following year.
When Sullivan suddenly resigned in 1928, the University accepted Yale's offer to lend its assistant coach, Howard W. Stepp, for the rest of the season -- and then kept him at Princeton as swimming coach for twenty-five years and as Registrar from 1947 until his retirement in 1969. Stepp's teams won 162 of their 228 meets for an overall percentage of .711. His 1938 team was the first to beat perennial champion Yale since 1924.
Stepp swimmers included seven national collegiate champions: Edwin J. Moles, Jr. '31, Richard R. Hough '39, and Robert L. Brawner '52 in the 200-yard breaststroke; Albert Vande Weghe '40 and James Shand '48 in the 1OO-yard backstroke, Edward P. Sherer '32 in the 50-yard freestyle; Robert L. Brawner '52 in the 1OO-yard butterfly; Albert Vande Weghe '40, Richard R. Hough '39, and Hendrik Van Oss '39 in the 300-yard medley relay. In 1939 Hough was awarded the N.C.A.A. Trophy as the ``outstanding swimmer of the year.'' Another Stepp swimmer, Howard L. Canoune '37 followed his mentor as varsity coach for five years from 1953 to 1958.
Robert L. Clotworthy (Ohio State '53), 1956 Olympic gold medalist in the three-meter dive, was coach from 1958 to 1970. ``A bubbly little man who treats swimming with . . . an enthusiastic reverence'' (in the words of Frank Deford '61), Clotworthy guided his 1962 swimmers to Princeton's first Eastern Seaboard team championship, and his twelve teams scored 104 victories in 148 dual meets for a winning percentage of .703. He trained three national Collegiate champions: G. Gardiner Green, Jr. '63 (100 yard breaststroke), Jed R. Graef '64 (200-yard backstroke), and Ross E. Wales '69~ (100-yard butterfly). Graef won an Olympic gold medal, in world-record time, in the 200-meter backstroke in 1964, and Wales was bronze medalist in the 1OO-meter butterfly at the 1968 Olympics.
Clotworthy's successor in 1970 was William W. Farley (Michigan '66), 1964 Olympic bronze medalist in the 1500-meter freestyle. His 1972 team, which completed Princeton's first undefeated season since 1924, captured the Eastern League championship and further distinguished itself by beating Yale by the widest Princeton margin achieved up to then -- 83 to 31.
In 1973 Princeton won its first Eastern Seaboard title since 1962, outscoring North Carolina by 120 points, as Captain Charles Campbell '73 earned four gold medals and Curtis Hayden '75, three, in individual and relay events.
Farley's 1974 team, which crushed Yale 91 to 22 during the regular season, won Princeton's second straight Eastern Seaboard championship with a breathtaking 419 to 411 victory over Harvard, accomplished in the last event of the meet when Princeton's 400-yard freestyle relay anchorman, Mal Howard '75, outstretched his Crimson opponent by half a stroke and touched home 47-1OOths of a second sooner.
Entering the last day of the Eastern Seaboard championships in 1975, Princeton trailed North Carolina by 13 points, but a one-two-three sweep by Joe Loughran '77, Curtis Hayden '75, and Rob Maass '78 in the 1650-yard freestyle, and winning scores for diver Bill Heinz '75 on the three-meter board, helped Princeton pull ahead by nine points to win its third successive Eastern Seaboard title.
Runner-up in both the 1-meter and 3-meter dives~~ at the 1974 N.C.A.A. Championships, Heinz was a student of two-time Olympic gold medalist Bob Webster (diving coach from 1966 to 1975), who also trained Eastern champions Holt Maness '69, John Huffstutler '71, Collins Landstreet '72, and Cece Herron '74, Princeton's first woman diving champion. Webster was succeeded by John Andrews '63 in 1975 and by another Olympic gold medalist, Leslie Bush Hickcox, in 1976.
The 1976 Princeton swimmers shared the Eastern title with Harvard and then outpointed them 344 to 252 in the Eastern Seaboard meet to win that championship for the fourth successive year.
In 1977, Princeton completed an undefeated season, won the league championship outright, and came from behind to beat Harvard 344 to 309 for an unprecedented fifth straight Eastern Seaboard title. That year's team, which Bill Farley said was the ``best we've ever had,'' was the first to win both league and the Eastern Seaboard championship titles.
In 1978, after losing out to Harvard for the dual-meet championship by a bare .69 second in the closing 400-yard freestyle relay, Princeton came back a month later to beat Harvard in the same event, with an Eastern Seaboard record time that gave Princeton its sixth straight Eastern Seaboard championship.
WOMEN'S SWIMMING TEAMS
Intercollegiate swimming by Princeton women began informally, and auspiciously, in 1971 when a freshman and a sophomore entered the Eastern Intercollegiate Women's championships and together scored enough points to win fifth place for Princeton -- Jane Fremon '75 by setting new Eastern records in the 100-yard butterfly and the 100- and 200-yard freestyle, Cece Herron '74 by finishing second in a field of seventeen divers.
A women's team was formally organized the following year, and from 1972 through 1975, Princeton women placed third, second, and then first twice in succession in the Eastern Intercollegiates.
At the 1973 Women's Nationals, Princeton finished third behind Arizona State and Florida as Cathy Corcione '74 set national records in the 100-yard freestyle and 100-yard butterfly, while joining Captain Carol Brown '75, Barbara Franks '76, and Jane Fremon '75 to set a national record in the 200-yard freestyle relay. That same year, the other pioneer, Cece Herron '74, was both the 1-meter and 3-meter diving champion at the 1973 Easterns. The following year at the 1974 Easterns, Cathy Corcione set another national record -- in the 100-yard individual medley -- and Eastern records in four other events.
Led by Captain Liz Osborne '76, who took first in the 50-, 100-, and 200-yard breaststroke, Princeton placed second in the 1976 Eastern Intercollegiates. The following year, paced by Mary Sykes '79 and Beth Mauer '80, the Princeton team decisively outpointed Yale, 657 to 520, to win the first official women's Ivy championship.
Coached initially by the men's varsity coach, Bill Farley, the women's team has had its own full-time coach since the fall of 1975. Dave Garretson '72 was coach until the fall of 1977, when he was succeeded by Jane Barkman Tyler, former American record holder and Olympic medalist. Her 1978 team took second place in both the Ivy and Eastern championships. Beth Mauer '80 set four Princeton records in the backstroke, butterfly, and the 200- and 400-yard individual medley.
From Alexander Leitch, A Princeton Companion, copyright Princeton University Press (1978).