Marilee Kiernan |
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Class:
Senior
Hometown:
Bronxville, N.Y.
High School:
Bronxville
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Position:
Breaststroke
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Marilee is a three-time high school All American and a New York
State Champion in the breaststroke. She also was named an Academic
All American by NISCA, twice-named a Scholastic All American by USA
Swimming, and recognized as an AP Scholar with Honors. Marilee
started swimming competitively at the age of five with the Badger
Swim Club led by John Collins. She competed on the Bronxville High
School varsity team since the seventh grade, lettering six times,
winning three New York State Section One Championships in the
breaststroke, and becoming captain her senior year. Her proudest
accomplishment, other than becoming a Yale Bulldog swimmer, was
winning the New York State High School Championship as a sophomore.
Her most exciting moment in the pool was swimming the breaststroke
leg of the Badger medley relay anchored by fellow Badger swimmer
and twelve-time Olympic medalist Jenny Thompson. Marilee's younger
sister and fellow Badger teammate, Erin McGowan Kiernan, is a
freshman at Princeton where she swims butterfly and IM on the
Women's Varsity Swim Team. Her grandmother and namesake, Marilee
Stepan Wehman, medaled in the 1952 Helsinki Olympic Games, and her
great grandmother, Mary Louise Therese Quinn Stepan, was a US
National Champion in 1929. A Philosophy major, premed student, and
member of Branford College, Marilee has consistently scored points
for Yale in the first three years of her college career capturing a
top three finish in every dual meet, and a top six place in each of
the three HYP meets and two of the three Ivy Championships. She is
most proud of being a member of the medley relay team that broke
the Yale record and finished third at the Ivy Championships in her
freshman year. Marilee chose to come to Yale for the unrivaled
quality of its undergraduate education, the overwhelming sense of
community within the residential colleges, and the daunting
challenge to make a contribution to the record of 35 undefeated
seasons, ten Ivy championships, four national championships, and 27
Olympic medals that constitutes the tradition of Yale Swimming.
