Senior captain Kathleen Holthaus won her fair share of races in her career, but a victory last weekend would have meant more than any of the others.
The Ivy League Championship weekend is always big for the seniors on the Penn women's swimming team, and not just because it determines the best team in the Ivy League.
The Championships, as the last meet of the season, mark the last time many of the seniors will ever swim competitively.
Heading into the weekend, the seniors were hoping to make their last Ivies appearance memorable.
Unfortunately, Holthaus and her teammates did not emerge from the water victorious in any events at Ivies.
Nevertheless, Holthaus performed extremely well, finishing second in the 1000-yard freestyle to close out her career with the Quakers.
Much of the same praise can be given to the Quakers as a team. While not pulling off an upset victory, Penn's female swimmers performed well individually and broke five school records at the championships.
In the overall standings, however, the Quakers matched last year's performance and placed sixth out of the eight Ivy League teams.
While it may not seem as if Penn has improved at all since last year, the opposite is actually true.
"We're closer to winning than we've ever been," Penn coach Mike Schnur said confidently. "On the middle and last days we had some amazing swims."
Schnur went on to add that halfway through this year's meet, the Quakers were trailing powerhouse Princeton by only 90 points.
According to Schnur, the deficit is a good sign of improvement Compared to last year, when the Tigers had almost doubled Penn's score by that point.
After the second day of the three-day event, the Red and Blue stood in fifth place, just ahead of Columbia.
But the Lions came back, battling on Saturday to overcome the Quakers and take the coveted fifth place spot by only a point.
Although disappointed by the slim margin of defeat, Schnur was pleased with many of his swimmers' individual performances.
He noted that freshman Stephanie Colson "showed a lot of promise," beating her previous best backstroke time by an incredible three seconds.
Colson and the rest of the freshmen who competed at Ivies gained some good experience swimming in such a big competition so early on in their careers.
While the seniors will not have another chance to take on the best of the Ivy League, the young swimmers will see their opponents many more times.
This year's extremely close loss to Columbia should serve as fuel when the women hit the water again at next year's competitions.
For now, Penn women's swimmers are left on their own to train in the off-season and come back next year ready to work hard in preparation for another shot at the Ivy League championship.
