Brown Bears invade Penn simmers' home pool

Lawlor-Gilbert to put Women in unfamiliar races If Brown women's swimming coach Ed Reed was looking at Penn's old box scores to try to find out its lineup for tomorrow's meet, he would be wasting his time. The Penn women's swimming team (0-5 Ivy League, 2-5 overall) intends to experiment, placing swimmers in unfamiliar events, during tomorrow's home meet (noon, Sheerr) against the Bears. Part of the reason for the Quakers' change is that winning the meet outright will be extremely difficult, since Penn is competing without a diving team -- spotting the Bears 26 points. "I think it's important to give people other events with the win being out of reach," Penn coach Kathy Lawlor-Gilbert said. "It keeps the athletes fresh." Moreover, the coach feels that mixing up the lineup will yield future benefits. Many swimmers will have a chance to swim their second- or third-best event. Despite the changes in the lineup, senior Eilish Byrne believes the team will match up successfully with Brown in many individual events. "I think we can win a lot of individual events," Byrne said. "That is our main goal. We're also trying to qualify as many people for the Easterns as we can." Competing against Brown (2-2, 2-6) will not be easy. The Quakers face a tough, deep team that will be gunning for its third Ivy win this season. "Overall, they may be a little deeper," assistant coach Mike Schnur said. "They have twice as many girls." "They're a strong team and deep in a lot of stroke events," Lawlor-Gilbert said. The coaches are looking for the Quakers to have strong turns off the wall. Lawlor-Gilbert feels that Penn's turns can be even further improved from last week's impressive performance against Dartmouth. "We were aggressive off the walls against Dartmouth," Lawlor-Gilbert said. "Our turns are even better than they were a week ago." The Quakers are also concentrating more on speed events in practice as they prepare for Easterns -- which takes place March 17-20. The focus on the individually-oriented Easterns has been intensified since the loss of the diving team has made winning dual meets exceedingly difficult. "We've been concentrating more on speed work," sophomore Gillian Beamer said. "We're focusing on qualifying for the Easterns regardless of who the competition is." For tomorrow's meet, Byrne is excited to find out the results of the lineup changes. "I think it's good," Byrne said. "I think it will be fun. It will give people a chance to swim different events that they don't normally do and see what they can accomplish.