Penn men's swimming coach Mark Schnur had his first real look at his loaded freshman class, and he was impressed.
The Quakers (0-1) made the long trip up to Boston to take on the defending conference co-champions Harvard (1-0) for their opening meet of the season.
The great performances by the freshmen, however, were not enough to prevent a loss to the Crimson, who beat the Quakers 189-101.
But Schnur expected the loss, focusing more on the positive.
"That was the biggest goal of this meet, to see what our freshmen could do . because we've got a lot of them," he said. "I felt that we had some real encouraging swimmers from the younger guys."
Schnur raved about the newcomers, citing great performances from John Benigno, Chris Buck, Brad Farris and Larkin MacDonald.
"The team is a lot stronger this year," junior Yuchi Zhang said. "Our freshman class is extremely confident."
While the Harvard swimmers dominated the meet, winning 15 of the 17 events, Schnur got what he wanted.
He stated that while his freshman class came out firing, his upperclassmen also performed up to his expectations. Zhang - who won the 200-yard breaststroke and came in second in the 100-yard breaststroke - lead the upperclassmen with an excellent day.
"In my 100 breast stroke, I did a personal best in a dual meet," Zhang said. "And my 200 breast stroke felt really good."
Despite the satisfactory performances by all of the swimmers, Schnur was not expecting any miracles against Harvard.
When asked what the key reason was caused the Crimson to come out victorious, Schnur simply said, "Harvard's better than we were. They're one of the 15 or 20 best teams in the country."
The greater experience and depth of the Crimson in virtually every event proved to be Penn's downfall. Zhang also added the fact that in swimming, the home team gets a large advantage because the travelling team only can bring 24 swimmers.
The Quakers, with their newfound confidence, will look to parlay their performance against the Crimson to a victory in their matchup next Saturday against Lehigh (1-1).
