False start slows M. Swimming at EISLs

Kenneth Goh became the first Penn swimmer to break an individual school record since 1996 as the Quakers finished their '99 season at Harvard's Blodgett Pool March 4-6. The Quakers finished 10th at the EISL Swimming and Diving Championships, which is the championship meet for all eight Ivy schools plus Army and Navy. Penn's swimmers performed well but a lack of divers cost the Quakers severely. The lack of divers allowed Dartmouth, which Penn had beaten 157-83 during the season, to finish ahead of the Quakers in ninth place. Big Green senior Toby Hays finished second at the one-meter board and won the three-meter event to contribute 60 of his team's 368 points. Penn, which finished with 324.5 points, was also plagued by a terrible stroke of luck. On the first day of the three-day meet, Penn's 400-yard medley relay team of Matt Reilly, Goh, Brian Cohen and Paul Poggi swam an impressive time of 3:24.47, good for sixth place and 48 points. But those points were taken away due to a false start; had the points counted, the Quakers would have returned to Philadelphia with a ninth-place finish despite their shorthanded diving status. "It's just a freak thing," Penn assistant coach Mike Schnur said. "That kind of thing happens once every five years or so and there's nothing you can really do about it." The Quakers did return, however, with their heads held high, as their performances at Easterns gave hope for next season. The record board at Sheerr Pool now shows the best example of such a performance. Goh, a freshman from Singapore, swam the 100-yard breaststroke in 56.52 seconds. Goh's time was 0.84 seconds faster than the previous school record, set by Mike Mattone in 1987. Goh finished second to Cornell junior Sherwood Yuen in the meet, securing 28 points for the Quakers. "I was definitely going for the record," Goh said. "Based on my training, I was pretty confident of getting the record. But right before the meet, I was just thinking of going out and swimming my best, getting as many points as I could." Yuen's and Goh's 1-2 finish should add even more spice to next year's Penn-Cornell dual meet. In this year's season opener, the Quakers shocked the Big Red, 128.5-114.5, at Sheerr Pool. The Quakers' followed with a thrashing of Dartmouth that sent them into the season's home stretch with a chance at their first winning campaign since 1991. But a seven-point heartbreaker at Columbia crushed that dream. "There were ups and downs," Goh said. "But I really enjoyed being part of this team and I think that we did pretty well on the whole." The Quakers kept working through the ups and downs and a multitude of swimmers swam their best times of the year at Easterns. Those personal bests, however, could not drive Penn or any other team past the host Crimson, whose totals after just the second day proved to be higher than eight of the school's final three-day totals. The Quakers might not have a great shot at dethroning the league's dominant team next year but continued improvement could put Goh and the Quakers above the magic .500 mark for the first time in nine years.