The Quakers are ready to rumble.
After a historic regular season, Penn women’s swimming and diving is full of momentum heading into the 2026 Ivy League women’s swimming and diving championships in Providence, R.I. held from Feb. 18-21. The Quakers finished the regular season third in the Ivy League with impressive 10-2 overall and 5-2 conference records. The team notably notched an undefeated home record — triumphantly defending their new Sheerr Pool. Sophomore butterfly/freestyle specialist Kayla Fu christened the Quakers’ new home with a pool record in the season’s first dual meet, and the team kept rewriting the history books as the season progressed — resetting 16 pool records and five program records across the regular season.
Heading into Ivies this weekend, Penn women’s swimming and diving’s strong roster are ready to continue that success on the conference stage and book tickets to NCAA Division I championships with the new NCAA qualification standards, which give automatic berths to conference champions who hit the national qualifying time standard at the meet.
“We are all super excited for this week! We are coming off one of our best dual meet season performances ever and are ready to keep that going this week,” senior distance freestyle specialist Sydney Bergstrom wrote in a statement to The Daily Pennsylvanian.
Bergstrom and senior captain and distance freestyle specialist Anna Moehn will lead the charge this weekend, headlining the Quakers’ historically dominant distance freestyle group. For the past three editions of Ivies, Penn has had either two swimmers on the podium or swept it entirely.
In their final seasons, Bergstrom and Moehn will look to notch their second and third berths, respectively, to NCAAs this weekend either via the new conference winner format or the rankings system. Bergstrom is seeded first and sixth in the 1650-yard free and 500 free, while Moehn is seeded second and fourth at this week’s championships.
“I would love to see a third NCAAs … If it doesn't happen, it doesn’t happen. That’s okay,” Moehn said on the Quaker Nation podcast in December. “But being there for a third time … and capping off my senior year that way would be really special.”
Another star set to shine is Fu, who is the reigning Ivy League champion in the 100 free. The three-time program record holder is seeded fourth in the 50 free and 100 fly and third in 100 free. Last year, Fu persevered through an illness during the last two days of the meet, including during her victorious pursuit of a championship in the 100 free. It will be exciting to see Fu’s ceiling at the championships if she’s fully healthy.
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The 100 fly is a deep event, with junior fly/backstroke specialist Kate Levensten, freshman fly/backstroke specialist Brianna Cong, and senior fly/freestyle specialist Amber Smith just behind Fu seeded in eighth, tenth, and 11th, respectively.
Levensten, though, will be one to watch in the backstroke events after lowering the 100 back pool record three times this season and breaking program records in both back events. The Lower Merion, Pa. native, who is also a former DP staffer, has made an impressive drop of over a second in less than a year to move into the record books. Her previous best was 54.10 set at last year’s Ivies.
This weekend, Levensten is seeded third in the 100 and 200 back. Penn’s depth shines here as well, with sophomore free/breaststroke specialist Amy Qin and Cong right behind seeded in sixth and eighth respectively.
“The girls are just absolutely working so hard every day, which is just so cool and so inspiring. I think it just goes back to that for the team [and] for the love of Penn mindset. We really try to be excellent in all that we do when it comes to practice,” Moehn said on the Quaker Nation podcast about the team’s depth this year. “I think it has made a pretty big impact.”
Junior back/free/individual medley specialist Katya Eruslanova was also a big history maker this season. To kick off 2026, the versatile upperclassman broke the pool records in 200 back, 200 free, and 200 IM in a tri-meet against Yale and Dartmouth. After finishing in fifth and sixth in the IM events last year, Eruslanova is looking to break onto the podium for the first time on the conference stage. The Havertown, Pa. native is seeded in fourth and sixth in the 200 and 400 IM, respectively, and faces some strong competition from Princeton in both events.
Another event to note for the Quakers will be the 400 medley relay, where they are seeded first with a time of 3:36.53.
On the diving side, senior Sadie Howard will lead the way for the small but mighty group. She finished the regular season on a high note with some nonconference wins. This week, the Vancouver, B.C. native is the highest seeded on the team across both diving events as she sits in eighth in the 3-meter dive.
The championships begin on Wednesday, and Penn women’s swimming and diving is looking to finish towards the top of the league after finishing the dual meet season in third place in the conference. The team hasn’t finished in the top three at Ivies since 2022.
