Penn storms back but falls to Navy

At the end of Saturday's men's swimming meet against Navy, Penn senior Bryan Thornton strutted down the deck, raising his arms in victory. While the small Sheerr Pool crowd stood cheering the Quakers, Thornton walked by the Penn bench, slapping his teammates' hands. The Midshipmen, on the other side of the pool, collected their jackets and headed to the locker room. It was an unusual scene at Sheerr, where the Quakers have not won a meet since January 30, 1994. The strange thing was Penn (2-5, 2-5 EISL) didn't beat Navy (8-1, 6-1). The Midshipmen topped the Quakers, 143-101. Thornton was celebrating Penn's victory in the 400-yard freestyle relay, which capped one of the Quakers' strongest all-around performances of the year. "I don't remember being that excited for a race, for a meet," sophomore Jeff Brown said. Penn's team of sophomore Ken Fletcher, Thornton, sophomore Eric Zamborsky and Brown went against one of the Eastern Intercollegiate Swimming League's top relay teams in Navy's Matt Smith, Chris Ornee, Jon Hurst and Stephen Platt. Fletcher looked strong in the first leg, pulling ahead of the pack for the first 50 yards. At the end of Fletcher's split, he had fallen behind Smith, but only by a fraction of a second. Thornton kept the Quakers neck-in-neck with the Midshipmen before tagging Zamborsky. The freshman pulled even with Navy, but fell back into second place before tagging Brown. By the time Brown hit the water, he was already a full length behind Platt. Brown slowly cut into Navy's lead and pulled even with Platt with 40 yards to go. Brown and Platt went into the final lap even. But Brown got a strong push off the wall and overpowered Platt to the finish. "To us, this was an important race -- to show them that we were not going to back down," Brown said. The Midshipmen had entered the meet as huge favorites to defeat the young Quakers. Early in the meet, it appeared as if it might be a Navy blowout. The Midshipmen jumped out to a 30-6 lead with 1-2 finishes in the 400 medley relay and the 1,000 freestyle. But Penn bounced back,winning the next three events to pull within nine points of Navy. With each Quakers victory, the crowd got louder and the Quakers' bench got more vocal. After Brown and Thornton won the 200- and 50-yard freestyles respectively, freshmen Andrew Valins and Colin Robinson finished first and second in the 400 individual medley. The Quakers were off the bench, pumping fists and exchanging high-fives, while the Midshipmen sat with blank stares across their faces. Down by only nine, the action moved to the one-meter springboard. Penn junior Josh Schultz was in top form, finishing with a cumulative score of 251.4. But against the conference's top diving squad, Schultz could only muster up a third-place finish. Navy's Nate Smith, who has finished first off the one- and three-meter boards every meet this year, won the one-meter event with a remarkable score of 347.1. The Quakers retaliated. Robinson and Valins struck again, this time finishing first and second in the 200 butterfly. With Penn down by a mere 11 points, the unthinkable -- a Quakers upset of the mighty Midshipmen -- began to seem more and more plausible. But just when it seemed Penn would pull ahead of Navy, the experience of the Midshipmen came through. Stephen Platt sent a message by winning the 100 freestyle a commanding 1.38 seconds ahead of the Quakers' Fletcher. Navy sealed the win by sweeping first through third places in the 200 breaststroke. While the breaststrokers stood on the blocks, waiting for the starting buzzer, Jeff Brown called Fletcher, Zamborsky and Thornton to the end of the bench. The four huddled as Brown explained to his teammates how badly he wanted to win the race. "But I found out they were all thinking the same thing," Brown said. "All four of us wanted to beat these guys, for no other reason than just to beat them. Just to show them we could beat them." They bowed their heads and placed their hands on top of one another's. When they broke from the huddle, the team headed for the starting blocks, led by the eccentric Thornton, perhaps the nation's only swimmer to wear a ski hat at poolside.