Quakers continue to roll on road

Penn - 175 Navy - 123

It was not supposed to be this easy.

While the Penn women's swimming program has made unprecedented strides in the past year, the Quakers had never beaten Navy in Annapolis before Saturday.

Pre-meet times gave Penn a slight advantage over the Midshipmen, but a 175-123 shellacking at Lejeune Hall? That's just crazy talk.

"We were just a bit tougher than Navy," Penn coach Mike Schnur said. "The meet could've gone the other way. Our women just really wanted to win."

Before the meet, Schnur emphasized that the Quakers would need not only to win certain events, but dominate them.

By the second event of the meet -- the 800 freestyle -- it was clear that Penn heeded Schnur's words. Kathleen Holthaus, Julia Russack, Maureen Schriver and Ashley Kemezys nabbed all four of the top spots in the event, propelling the Penn rout.

But Holthaus' best was yet to come. In the 400 meter freestyle, Penn's school record holder burst out to what would normally be a comfortable two second lead against Navy's freshman sensation, Megan Welsh.

Typically, sprinters like Welsh do not have strong finishes in distance races like the 400 freestyle, as they usually use all of their effort in the first half of the race, thereby leaving little energy for the finish.

But Welsh is not a typical sprinter. After trailing most of the race, Welsh suddenly surged forward to catch Holthaus in the final 50 meters of the race.

"I didn't see her until 15 meters out [from the wall]. Right then I knew that I better start kicking," Holthaus said.

"I guess when I started getting ahead of her, I got a little complacent. I realized that she had some sprint at the end. I just squeezed in there. I was basically lucky."

Because of the construction of Navy's pool, Holthaus was not even aware that she had beaten Welsh at the moment she touched the wall. She swam back a few meters to see the time, but the eruption of cheers on Penn's side of the pool had already alerted her about the result.

That the victory was by one hundredth of a second made the win that much sweeter for the Quakers.

"We all had faith in her," junior Lauren Dawe said. "There was no way that she was going to let someone catch her in the last 50 meters."

In addition to Holthaus' two victories in the distance freestyle events, Katie Frazee grabbed wins in the 100 and 200m backstroke, and Katie Stores won all three sprint freestyle events -- the 50 free, 100 free and 200 free.

Russack, Rachel Zappalorti, Ashley Rader and Erin Tompkins also added individual victories during the meet.

Yet, like other performances throughout the year, the Penn swimmers attribute much of their success in the Navy meet to the depth of the Quakers.

"You can't win a meet on just first places," junior Jessica Anders said. "You need the twos, you need the threes, you need the fours, you need the fives."

"That's obviously why we're doing well. I think that if we didn't have those points to back up the first places, it would've been a lot closer."

By the final event of the meet -- the 200 freestyle relay -- Penn had built enough of a lead to render its relays "exhibition events," so as not to run up the score.

Had the Quakers swum the race for a place, they would have won that event, too -- by a mere 15 hundredths of a second.

Penn returns to Ivy League competition this Saturday for a tri-meet in New Haven, Conn. against Yale and Dartmouth. The following day, the Quakers travel to Providence, R.I. to take on Brown.

"I think we all are pretty confident in ourselves at this point," sophomore Rebecca Shore said. "We're just going to go into this weekend hoping to give [Yale and Brown] a scare."

Last year, Yale placed third at Ivy League championships, while Brown grabbed second, but the Quakers are not intimidated by either team's Ivy history -- or Yale's 70 year-old-pool, for that matter.

"We know that we have what it takes to finish off the season really well," Dawe said.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.