The women's swimming and diving team only won one event last night at the Eastern Women's Swimming League Championships, but still found themselves in first place.

Surprisingly, the lone victory was the 400-yard medley relay, an event the Lady Lions have struggled in all year. The winning team of Lori Williams, Beth Haas, Jen Baird and Fran McDermid finshed in 3:50.75.

Penn State leads second-place and favorite Harvard, 172.5-153. Yale is the surprise so far, placing third at 136. Host Princeton is fourth at 128, and Brown, with a score of 118.5, is in fifth. The championships will continue today and tomorrow at Princeton's DiNunzio Natatorium.

"It was a shocking first day," Coach Bob Krimmel said. "Just an unbelievable day!"

The Lady Lions did not take over the top spot until the 1-meter diving finals, where the team outscored Harvard, 29-6. Lara vonSeelan was the top team finisher, coming in fourth. Defending champion Amy Schmidt was right behind her, finishing fifth.

Cornell's Jackie Cadwalder upset the opposition as she won the 1-meter board championship. Even though the team was unable to win a title, Coach Craig Brown was still satisfied with the performance.

"I was real happy with Lara's list of dives," Brown said. "We ran into some stiff competition."

Dana Kozimor of Northeastern and Princeton freshman Stacey Cooper came in second and third, respectively. The surprise of the meet was the diving, or lack of, from Christa Rattiff and Donna Flatch of Pittsburgh. Flatch finished in seventh, and Rattiff, who is suffering from a middle-ear problem, did not dive.

The 3-meter preliminaries will take place today, when the field will be cut to the top eight divers. The finals are tomorrow, where vonSeelan will attempt to repeat her 3-meter championship from a year ago.

"It's a wide open event," Brown said. "We're ready and are not down (about the 1-meter)."

The Lady Lions opened the evening by coming in a close second to Yale in the 200 free relay. The team of McDermid, Tracey Sheleheda, Jane Kleiderlein and Christy Rourke had a time of 1:34.54. Yale's team set an Eastern record with a time of 1:33.57.

Other top finishers for the Lady Lions were Heather Nicholson finishing sixth in the 500 freestyle (4:56.18), McDermid finishing fourth in the 50 freestyle (23.81) and Janet Worobel coming in 10th in the 200 individual medley (2:10.32).

"The kids just scratched and clawed for everything today," Krimmel said. "Our depth got us all our points."

Krimmel is expecting Harvard and Princeton to come back today because most of their strong events will be swum tonight. Plus, with no diving, the Lady Lions are going to need an even stronger performance in the pool.

"We just want to stay close (today)," Krimmel said. "We want to start the last day not too far behind."