W. Swim unable to overcome losses

It would have been easy to give up. Without any divers, the Penn women's swimming team knew it did not have a realistic chance of winning Saturday's home meet against Dartmouth. Nevertheless, the Quakers persevered, posting some of their best times of the season before succumbing to the Big Green, 178-109. The coaching staff was pleased by the team's gutsy performance. "They swam really tough and aggressive," Penn coach Kathy Lawlor-Gilbert said. "You might expect a mental slump because you know the win is out of reach. But they didn't swim like that." "They swam as well as we could have hoped for," assistant coach Mike Schnur said. "They knew they weren't going to win the meet, but still did a great job today." Penn (2-5 overall, 0-5 Ivy League) took a brief lead in the meet after the third event -- the 200-yard freestyle -- because of the strong performance of sophomore Kerry Bolstad, who won the event with the time of 1:57.75. Behind in the last 25 yards, she charged ahead and was able to just nip her nearest competitor by less than three-tenths of a second. "Kerry Bolstad had an incredible 200 free," Schnur said. "It was a picture perfect race." However, the Quakers were not able to keep up the momentum from Bolstad's heroics and were behind the rest of the way. Penn was within striking distance of Dartmouth (4-3, 2-3) until the first diving event. "Even though we lost a lot of points in diving, we still did well," sophomore Gillian Beamer said. "We were just concentrating on qualifying for the Easterns." The focus on the Easterns, which takes place March 17-20, has been intensified because the depletion of the diving team has made winning dual meets extremely difficult. To that end, freshman Gillian Morris qualified for the Easterns in the 400-yard individual medley during Saturday's meet. She became the sixth Quaker to qualify so far. "I made the cut before in high school," Morris said. "I was pretty confident I would qualify." Other swimmers just missed the times they needed to qualify. This was particularly impressive to the coaches because they did not rest before this meet. "I think they are getting more confidence in every meet," Schnur said. " A lot of girls were right on top of their cut [for the Easterns] and were very, very close to making it." Besides Bolstad and Morris, other Quakers had impressive meets. Beamer and sophomore Alison Zegar placed first in the 200-yard breaststroke and 1,000-yard freestyle, respectively. "It was a nice performance by the entire team," Lawlor-Gilbert said. "I'd like to see us do this well all season." The coaching staff felt the week of practice in Florida helped to make this meet a successful one, despite the loss. "We did a lot of positive, hard work in Florida," Lawlor-Gilbert said. "I think it payed off. This meet was our most aggressive performance of the season." That bodes well for the future, according to Beamer. "Every swim meet is different," she said. "You learn from each one and do better."