W. Swimming hasn't heard about vacation

Over winter break, the women's swimming team will be training in Tampa. True, they will be in Florida, and true the weather should be pleasant, but can it be considered vacation? Penn coach Kathy Law- lor-Gilbert describes winter training as "very, very, very intense." Most would be turned off by such a vacation, but the swimmers and divers are ready to face the challenge. It is hard to imagine this year's training being worse than last year's. When the rest of the East Coast was inside trying to keep warm, the swimming team was trudging through the snow on Penn's vacant campus to go to practice every day. So, although the women will admit that the level of training is miserable, they hope that being in Tampa will make it more bearable. Over break the swimmers train up to five hours a day. Such a schedule demands that they be in optimal shape upon arrival. In Tampa, the focus for Penn will be extensive and demanding training. The Quakers will have double practices everyday, along with dry land exercises to work on flexibility and strength. The swimmers feel that the Christmas training will be advantageous. Spending so much time focusing only on swimming, with no academic distractions, should greatly enhance their ability to train hard. The different environment will allow the team to avoid the monotony of the everyday Penn practice and will increase the team morale. For the divers, the focus is slightly different. At the beginning of the season they focused on trying to do dives that they can at least participate in meets -- there's not enough time to prepare for competitive dives. With no pressure to perform, they are working on improving basic skills. The Quakers will be perfecting their dives, and a few will be trying to learn new dives so that they can be more versatile. "We're always looking to train so that we can learn harder and more difficult dives, but we can't do this until we have mastered the basics," Penn diving coach Phillip Bergere said. "They must learn to overcome fear so that they can learn new dives. Once we get back from Christmas break we can settle down and get into tougher dives." In addition to training, the Red and Blue will be participating in two meets during break. On January 5th, they will compete against Miami and North Carolina State in the Ibis Invitational meet. The meet will be fun and challenging, but Penn will be training right through and do not regard it as a big meet. Its primary purpose is to give Penn a chance to see where they are in their winter training regimen. "Competing in such an intense time of training really shows your true grit, who is tough and who is not," sophomore backstroker Lauren Ballough said. "As a team, I think we have a positive attitude going in that we can get a lot of work done." Just before returning to school, on January 11th, the Quakers will be competing against Dartmouth, a team which is well-matched with Penn. Assistant coach Mike Schnurr believes that it will be a tough meet and that Penn's women will battle all the way. Dartmouth has the advantage of being at home and Penn will just have gotten off of a plane from Florida and then a bus from Penn. After the Colgate Invitational, though, the Quakers are used to swimming on the road and are well-prepared for later competitions. "I also am particularly looking forward to Dartmouth, which is shortly after we return home from Florida," freshman Jamie Taylor said. "Dartmouth is going to be a huge meet -- it could be our first Ivy league victory in years and I am looking to go up to New Hampshire and give the Big Green a severe beatdown." Winter training really sets the tone for Easterns in terms of how far the swimmers swim in workouts and how well the divers master the basics, as well as how much strength both can acquire. According to the coaches, the work between now and January 15th is what will carry Penn through Easterns. "With all of the hard work over Christmas training, everyone will be ready to race in the upcoming meets," co-captain Christy Meyer said. "Honestly, it really is just a lot of hard work and the help of our teammates gets us through every day of training." True, break will be challenging and strenuous, but the progress made, the experience gained, and the lessons learned will be well worth it. "They are learning to swim tough and to swim tough when they're tired and not feeling so well. This is a huge and valuable lesson to learn. Attitude and toughness is key, it's all about digging down deep." Lawlor-Gilbert said.