Leila El Masri - Women's Swimming and Diving

CLAREMONT, Calif. - Freshman Leila El Masri was part of a youth movement that led the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps women's swimming and diving team to a 195-158 win over Pomona-Pitzer on Friday and Saturday in the annual two-day meet between the Sixth Street rivals. 

El Masri won the 200 free and the 500 free for the Athenas, as the CMS freshman class captured eight individual swimming wins (out of the 13 in the meet). After Pomona-Pitzer finished 1-2 in the opening relay on Friday, El Masri helped set the tone for the rest of the meet by taking a close win in the 500, touching the wall in 5:09.07, just one second ahead of Kirsten Mortimer of Pomona-Pitzer, swinging the momentum back towards CMS.

On Saturday, she took another close win in the 200 free, but this time it was edging out her own teammates, finishing in 1:54.94, just ahead of sophomore Allie Umemoto (1:55.24) and senior Riley Hoffman (1:55.31) as CMS went 1-2-3 in another momentum-swinging race. Pomona-Pitzer had just finished 1-2-3 in the previous event (the 100 back), but El Masri and her 200 teammates helped make sure there was no comeback in store. She finished off her meet by finishing second in the 1650 to teammate Mia Syme, who holds the SCIAC record in the event set last year. El Masri held off Anna Newman of Pomona-Pitzer by four seconds to ensure the Athenas of another 1-2 finish. 

CMS will be off for a month before El Masri will be one of the Athenas heading to Cal Baptist for a distance meet on Jan. 4. The next full meet will be at Whittier on Jan. 12.