The Kenyon men’s swimming team has won 30 straight NCAA Division III championships. But this weekend, the Penn men’s swimming team almost beat the Lords in their home pool.
The Quakers were defeated, 1531-1446.5, by the host Lords in this weekend’s Nike Invitational, coming in second of the five competing teams.
“It’s a fun meet in a really good environment,” senior James Fee said. “The pool is about five years old and it’s a great venue. We have stiff competition with Kenyon every year.”
After Thursday, the meet’s first day of competition, the Red and Blue were in the lead. They fell closely behind after day two, and Penn entered Saturday ready for redemption. But its efforts, and any chance of a comeback, were stunted by Kenyon in the meet’s final events.
Penn (1-2, 1-2 Ivy) and Kenyon both hovered near the top of the standings until Saturday’s 100-yard freestyle. In the event’s final heat, seven of the eight swimmers were Lords. With that race, Kenyon took the lead and never looked back.
The Quakers started the meet in record fashion, as Fee set a pool record in the 1,650 freestyle with a time of 15:30.24 — an NCAA consolation qualifying time.
“I was surprised at how fast I went, but I felt good the whole time,” Fee said.
Going into Friday’s finals, the Quakers knew that they needed to step up in order to maintain their lead. No one did more to keep Penn on top than sophomore Brendan McHugh, who swam to victory in both the 100 breaststroke and 400 individual medley.
Despite an impressive number of Quakers finishing in the top-eight spots of every event, it was not enough to overcome Kenyon’s talent and depth. By the end of Friday night’s session, the Quakers had lost their lead and trailed the Lords by less than 20 points.
Saturday showed potential for a turnaround. Fee won the 500 freestyle, McHugh won the 200 breaststroke and 200 IM, and freshman Conor Blackwood took second in the 200 backstroke.
“Conor was phenomenal — he had a breakout meet,” coach Mike Schnur said.
Despite stellar individual performances, the Quakers were unable to overcome the point deficit to Kenyon, but still finished ahead of Carnegie Mellon, Davidson, and Johns Hopkins.
Now, it’s back to the pool for a month of tough workouts.
After a day off of practice for traveling yesterday, “hard training starts again [Monday] morning,” according to Schnur.
“Everyone knows that we have to get back to work,” Fee said. “We have to keep building on what we did for this meet in order to go fast at the end of the year. It’s always hard.”
Schnur believes they will do just that.
“I’m very enthused with the way a lot of our guys swam,” he said. “I’m very impressed.”
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