Until this year, Penn senior Andrew Trout had never made the finals of the Eastern Intercollegiate Swimming League Championships. But at the weekend-long competition in Princeton, N.J., on March 4-6, he had the best meet of his life, making his performance one of the few bright spots of Penn's eighth- place finish.
In the 100-yard freestyle, Trout also finished eighth, advancing to the finals and setting a school record with a time of 45:56. He also became Penn's all-time leader in the 50-yard freestyle the same weekend.
Penn coach Mike Schnur expressed his pleasure with Trout's success, which did not come to him as a surprise.
"It was great to see him finish his career with such an outstanding meet," Schnur said. "He worked his butt off all year and really earned it."
Trout was not the sole Quaker with such a work ethic. Freshman Jason McGrath showed tremendous improvement by dropping about nine seconds off his time in the 500-yard freestyle since the start of the season.
Schnur predicted that the freshman will develop into one of the best swimmers in the Ivy League.
Facing off against the present-day Ivy League's best at Princeton, the Quakers were not expected to finish much ahead of last place. Penn finished the EISLs ahead of Dartmouth and Army.
"We definitely swam at the level that we should have," Schnur said proudly.
He emphasized that most of his squad swam very well, no worse than they had all season. Going into the meet, Schnur recognized that his team had a lot of points to make up for departed seniors.
In order to make an impact on the competition next year, the Quakers have to take advantage of the cycle of graduating swimmers and incoming recruits.
"The recruiting class that we bring in has to more than replace the leaving seniors," Schnur said. "We have to hope that our younger guys step up more than" other teams'.
In addition to McGrath, sophomore Pat Maloney and freshman Joe Griffith, who both reached the finals in the 200-yard butterfly, make up the "younger guys" who hope to take the Quakers to the next level.
All three should serve as excellent examples for next year's recruiting class, which has been described by Schnur as "phenomenal."
The coach expects the new additions to the Quakers' roster to really give the team a boost and possibly move them up three or four places at next year's EISLs. Right now, there is nowhere to go but up.
