One of the byproducts of the men’s swimming team’s strong performances against Brown and Harvard over winter break was a series of injuries that will hurt the team’s depth this weekend.
Tomorrow Penn hosts two rivals, Yale (2-2, 0-2 Ivy) and Dartmouth at Sheerr Pool in the Quakers’ last Ivy meet before the Ivy Championships.
Although Yale will be more of a challenge than Dartmouth (1-5, 0-3 Ivy), the Big Green will not be overlooked.
“Their freshmen are really good,” coach Mike Schnur said. “Dartmouth has probably the best freshman class I’ve ever seen them have.”
Still, the Red and Blue (2-3, 2-3 Ivy) are confident that they will come out on top, especially given that none of the players on Penn’s current roster have ever lost to Dartmouth.
While Yale will be a serious challenge for the Quakers, who have not beaten the Bulldogs since January 2007, the Penn team is still confident.
“We’re just a lot deeper than we have ever been before, especially in the sprints, the I.M., and the freestyle,” senior captain James Fee said.
According to Schnur, the Quakers are swimming the best they have all season.
The team has reinforced strong performances against Brown and Harvard over the break with hard work and difficult training sessions.
“We just came off probably the hardest training we’ve done since I’ve been on the team,” said junior Alex Kalish. “We’ve got guys who are doing sets that we’ve never been able to complete before.”
However, the hard training and tough meets have resulted in injuries to many key swimmers. The Quakers are particularly decimated at backstroke and will be forced to rely on freshmen to fill the voids.
In particular, freshman Chris Fleming, who usually swims freestyle, will swim both freestyle and backstroke this weekend.
Because the team is depleted at backstroke Schnur indicated that it needs to dominate freestyle and breaststroke and challenge in butterfly in order to beat Yale.
Goksu Bicer of Yale and Albert Roth of Dartmouth will provide the biggest challenge for Penn in butterfly while Yale’s Lugar Choi will be a major threat in freestyle.
And though the Ivy Championships are just around the corner, the Quakers will not take either opponent lightly this weekend.
“A win on Saturday — that would just fire us up,” Kalish said. “That’s what we’re all gunning for.”
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