Princeton falls in bid for back-toback state titles

PISCATAWAY >> All season long as the Princeton High girls swim team was checking off boxes to lead to this day.

Its highly-anticipated rematch with Chatham in the state final.

Once again it came down to the final race, only this time the Tigers couldn’t pull it out.

The Cougars denied the Tigers back-to-back Group B state titles when Kiera Harkins held on in the final lap of the 400 freestyle relay finale to propel Chatham to an 89-81 victory on Sunday afternoon at the Rutgers Aquatics Center.

“We were converging to the point that we knew were probably going to meet again at this point,” Princeton coach Carly Fackler said. “Every race, every set, every warm up, every warm down in practice is geared towards moments like this.”

Trailing when she entered the pool on the anchor leg, senior Kyleigh Tangen nearly rallied the

Tigers to the relay victory they needed to force a tie but she couldn’t quite real in Harkins, who held her off by about a stroke.

“I think myself and everybody else was surprised to make it as far as we did,” said Tangen, who had individual wins in the 50 free and 100 free. “With every meet that we won, we got more and more encouraged and ready to take on the next, that is what we went into this meet feeling everybody was really nervous but nervousness pushes you. I saw amazing swims all across the board.”

Princeton had a 28meet win streak snapped and finished with an overall record of 14-1. The Tigers went undefeated in the CVC and won the Mercer County Tournament.

“It has been such a fun ride and I am going to miss them all so much,” Tangen said. “I am happy that we had the maximum amount of meets this year so I could keep swimming with them all.”