M. Swimming to face beatable Big Red in Ivy season-opener

The Penn men's swimming team will kick off the season this Friday with its first meet at Princeton. The Quakers will race against Princeton and Cornell at Denunzio Pool, where they will be looking to dominate the Big Red. The Tigers, however, are considered by most to be a step above the other two. "We're not even going to fool ourselves, [Princeton's] just there?. It's basically just a dual meet between us and Cornell," senior co-captain Matt Reilly said. "We're going after Princeton knowing that if we go after them we'll beat Cornell." Penn, which will return a successful core of swimmers and welcome a strong recruiting class, is hoping to have a successful season this year. "We're a much better team [than last year]," said interim head coach Mike Schnur, who took over when Kathy Lawlor-Gilbert retired before the season. "[It's] hard to compare the two. We lost two good seniors from last year's team, guys that contributed a lot, but I think our freshman class is a lot deeper than our losses. "They have a great attitude, and I think that we're going to be a very tough team to beat by second semester." The Quakers will be looking to repeat last year's success against Cornell in this weekend's meet. "We beat Cornell last year in a very emotional meet. I'd have to say it was one of the better experiences I've had in terms of just great racing," senior co-captain Amir Rozwadowski said. "Princeton's fundamentally one of the top teams in the league so it's always a difficult meet. We haven't done as well as we would have liked to in the past but coming out of those meets we've always proven ourselves as tough competitors." The Quakers will have to be tough if they are to meet their goals for this season. "There are certain meets we would like to go after. We have set targets of beating Cornell, Columbia, Dartmouth and Army, and all of our out-of-league teams," Schnur said. "And at Easterns, finishing higher than we did last year. But the most important thing is that if everyone swims faster than they did last year, the points take care of themselves." The Quakers' goals won't be easy to meet, especially since Penn hasn't beaten Army in more than 20 years. A recent injury to diver Matt Cornell will put even greater pressure on the Red and the Blue to produce the necessary points. "The only question mark we have right now is our best diver, Matt Cornell, hit the board the other night and broke his hand, so he may be out or impaired at least for about a month," Schnur said. "He was diving superbly this year. We're hopeful he'll be able to at least compete on Friday. It will make it a little more difficult. "We'll have to swim even faster to make up the points we're missing. Matt's one of the best swimmers on the team, and diving is a big part [of each meet]."