Big Green surprise at Scheerr Pool

Both Yale and Dartmouth were too much for the young Penn women's swimming team to handle last Saturday at Scheerr Pool. The dual meet scoring format gave Penn a chance to compete separately against its two Ivy League rivals, but Penn (1-8, 0-5) went down 167-113 to Yale and 184-115 to Dartmouth. Penn coach Kathy Lawlor-Gilbert had fired up the swimmers to attack Dartmouth from the start, but the Quakers only managed three first place finishes against the Big Green. Super-freshman Cathy Holland once again led the way with two first-place finishes in the 1000-yard freestyle and the 200 breaststroke. Kelly James, who took the 200 backstroke in 2:14.94, was the only other first place finisher against Dartmouth. Surprisingly, the Red and Blue matched up better with Yale. Again, Penn only managed three first place finishes, but a sweep in the 100 fly and 1-2 finishes in the 200 breaststroke and 500 freestyle made this a closer contest. The Quakers had all of their success against Yale in three consecutive events. With the score 152-34 in Yale's favor, Holland began the Quakers' run by winning the 200 breaststroke in 2:27.45. Co-captain Lauren Hibbert and freshman Katie Kowalski then finished first and second, respectively, in the 500 freestyle. The final and biggest boost for Penn came in the 100 fly, where Jen Walsh (1:01.44), Patty Walshaw (1:01.77) and Janea Jackson (1:02.86) swept Yale and brought the Quakers within 85 points of Yale. "Its not that we haven't been swimming well recently. We all did well time-wise but we just haven't won," Hibbert said. "Dartmouth swam terrific today. Our meet with them was up in the air." Perhaps Penn could have done some things to give themselves a better chance to win, but in some events, it is just a matter of numbers. For the last two weeks, Penn has entered only one athlete, sophomore Alayne Rowan, in the diving segments of the meets. Two weeks ago, both Brown and Army had two or three divers each. This weekend, both Dartmouth and Yale entered four divers to Penn's one in both diving events. "We have a small diving program," head diving coach Phil Bergere said earlier. But diving is not the only aspect of meet racing that can be improved. Both coaches and co-captains said that there is no lacking in effort, discipline and commitment on the part of the athletes. If the recruiting staff did a good job, then the talent should be good enough to stand on par with other Ivy League competition. Lawlor-Gilbert and Schnur have a difficult task ahead. Their team has not won since the first week of December and with the Ivy Championships only a month away, both will need to make full use of their combined 20 years of coaching experience to find a way to win.