At first glance, the Penn swim teams' losses to Brown on Saturday were not the best way to kick off the new year -- the men fell 137.50-105.50, while the women lost 123-120.
However, both the men's and women's teams walked away from the Smith Swim Center in Providence, R.I. in good spirits and confident of their chances at the Ivy Championships in February.
"The women gained a lot of confidence from this," Penn coach Mike Schnur said. "Brown beat us by more last year in our pool. Our girls just came through beautifully. At the end there was not one long face in the building."
It was a different story on the men's side, however. Brown took 10 of 13 events on the day en route to a more lopsided final score.
"For the guys, we just have to go back and keep training hard," Schnur said. "We're disappointed, but it certainly wasn't from a lack of effort. They gave it everything they had."
Despite the final score, the men's team is also confident of its chances at the end of the season when it will get another opportunity against the Bears.
"There were a lot of close races that we just ended up losing," junior Jason McGrath said, who finished second in the 500-yard and 1,000-yard freestyle races. "If we keep working hard, we've got the talent to beat Brown at the end of the year."
Coming off their annual training trip to Florida, the teams were eager to get in the pool and compete after 11 days of grueling workous.
"The team as a whole worked our butts off in Florida, and we just came back and left it all out there today," said junior Margot Newcomer, who won the 500-yard freestyle. "Today was just about us showing heart and toughness. We made a huge statement that at the end of the year we're going to be awesome."
Not surprisingly, Schnur doesn't plan on changing the teams' approach much, even after a loss.
"For the women, we're not making any adjustments at all. Maybe some fine tuning," Schnur said.
"For the men, we're going to work even harder this week. We've got a lot of guys on this team with great attitudes and work ethics and we're just going to keep working hard."
The teams will travel to New Haven, Conn., this Saturday to face Yale and Dartmouth.
