W. Swim. to face two Ivies

Penn head coach Kathy Lawlor-Gilbert expects the Quakers to earn their first Ivy win against the Big Green. It will be a veritable color war as the Red and Blue take on the Big Green women's swim team at Sheerr Pool this weekend. Yale (4-3, 2-1) will also be in attendance, but the real battle will be between Penn (1-6, 0-3) and Dartmouth (3-3, 1-1). Alayne Rowan and Johanna Minich, Penn's only two divers, will start things off at noon Friday. The swimming segment of the meet begins at noon Saturday. Head coach Kathy Lawlor-Gilbert and assistant coach Mike Schnur have both marked the contest with Dartmouth as a focus of the dual meet season since the beginning of the year. "I call it a focus meet in the sense of keying in on it for the season," Lawlor-Gilbert said. "We really need to go after the Dartmouth girls and make all our hard work pay off." Even though all three teams will have two swimmers in every event, the meet will be scored in a dual meet format. That means the Quakers will be scored separately against Yale and Dartmouth. "We know this is an important meet and even though we suffered a tough loss to Navy, I think we should be ready for it," co-captain Lauren Hibbert said. Lawlor-Gilbert is not as concerned about the team's performance against Yale. "They are one of the stronger teams in the Ivy League. We know that our meet is really going to be with Dartmouth. But if we can challenge Yale's swimmers, that will mean that we are taking care of Dartmouth," said Lawlor-Gilbert. The little things that enabled Army and Navy to slip away from Penn need to click for the Quakers Saturday. According to Lawlor-Gilbert, the swimmers will concentrate on fundamentals like better turns, aggressive starts and smoother relay takeoffs. Perfecting the basics and winning are the goals of the Quakers Saturday.