The Penn men's swimming began the season armed with a new attitude, new hopes and most importantly, new talent. Trying to rebound from a disappointing 3-10 season with only one win in league play, assistant coach Mike Schnur said before the season, "I think we'll do better this year. Our guys won't take a back seat to anybody." But no one really knew if Schnur's prediction would become reality. Penn was losing perhaps its best swimmer ever in Steve Kuster, and replacing him with 14 untested, inexperienced freshmen. These untested, inexperienced 14 freshmen who comprise nearly half of the team proved tough enough and talented enough to help Penn significantly. Especially helpful was the highly recruited, highly touted freshman Jeff Brown. Brown lived up to his billing as he quickly became one of the team's top swimmers. The improved result: 5-6 overall, 3-6 EISL. "It went pretty well," said senior captain Rob Morris of the season. "We improved a lot from last year. The dual meet season went well." The dual meet season did not start out that way as Penn dropped its first three meets -- to Yale, Cornell and Princeton. But then the team caught fire, aided in large part by lower-caliber competition and home-pool advantage. The Quakers swept their next three Ivy opponents -- Columbia, Dartmouth and Brown. "We had some close meets that didn't go our way," senior David Simon said. "We had a couple of solid meets. Columbia, Dartmouth and Brown were all really strong meets. We swam pretty well." The rest of the dual-meet season had mixed results as the team won its non-league games -- Johns Hopkins and Swarthmore -- but fell to its three remaining EISL foes -- Navy, Army and Harvard. The Quakers ended the dual-meet season with a sixth-place EISL finish. Then the second season began in the form of the Eastern championships. The event, held at Army March 3-5, was a focus throughout the season. The Quakers seventh-place finish left some members of the team disappointed. "I would like to see better," freshman Ken Fletcher said. "I don't like to settle for seventh." A positive sign for the future is that only three seniors will be graduating, while the 14 freshmen will gain a year of experience. "The freshman are really strong," Simon said. "Assuming we'll get good recruiting, we have a shot of being really good."
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