Crimson run up score on M. Swimming

In most sports, if you are beating your opponent badly, it is usually good manners to stop scoring. The Harvard men's swimming team apparently forgot its manners this weekend at Blodgett Pool in Cambridge, Mass. The Crimson crushed the Penn men's swimming team 227-54 on Saturday, in a not-so-friendly reminder that they are ranked No. 20 in the nation and the Quakers decidedly are not. Penn only managed to take second place in one event during the meet, and that was in an event with only one Harvard swimmer. There were also four third-place finishes by Penn swimmers --only half of those finishes were in events with more than two Harvard swimmers. Penn did not expect to win this meet. In anticipation of such a rout, many of the swimmers who will be attending the Eastern Intercollegiate Swimming League Championships on March 2-4 opted not to make the trip to Boston so that they could rest up or recover from injuries. Also, many of the seniors wanted to end their Penn careers with a big win over Bucknell on February 5, instead of a defeat to Harvard. "I got to meet some new guys, and the whole general feeling of the weekend was a lot more laid back and relaxed," sophomore diver Matt Cornell said. "We weren't going in there thinking we can beat Harvard, so it was just go and have a good time." However, those that stayed home were probably glad they did, as Friday's snow storm made for slow travel on the road to Boston. "We [went to Harvard] Friday and we followed the snowstorm the whole way up and got stuck in lots of traffic," Cornell said. "It took 10 hours instead of five, and it seemed like the bus trip that never ended." Many of Penn's second-tier swimmers competed on Saturday against a full Harvard squad. This was the last chance to swim this season for those Quakers not heading to the EISL Championships to be held at Princeton in 10 days. "[Harvard] swam all their best guys," Penn coach Mike Schnur said. "Maybe so they could give their seniors a good last home meet." Despite Penn missing some of its better swimmers on Saturday, Harvard is still obviously the superior team. That means that Penn's swimmers will need to be at the top of their game for Easterns if they are to place highly. The EISL championship places a higher focus on individual achievements than do team-oriented dual meets. Penn's 17 swimmers will be able to compete in the events that they have the best chance of winning, instead of swimming in areas that the team needs to score points. The ultimate objective at Easterns is to have Penn swimmers qualify for the NCAA championships. Penn has only sent two swimmers to the NCAAs in the last 10 years. Penn's focus will now be on preparing for the trip to Princeton in two weeks. The 17 guys who will make that trip will taper, which is the process of decreasing the intensity of workouts, in order to swim their fastest times at the championship. They will also shave their body hair, which in tandem with tapering, gives the swimmers a feeling of maximum speed through the water. "The team is really ready to explode at championships," senior co-captain Amir Rozwadowski said. "This team hasn't taken crap from anyone this year. That's what's going to bring them through."