Playing through an injury is always tough, but sophomore swimmer Tara Gillies overcame this burden and swam four of the best races of her life.
Inspired by this performance, the Penn women's swim team (11-4, 4-3 Ivy) pulled out a 155-145 victory over Navy (11-2, 6-0 Patriot) Saturday. Earlier in the day, the Penn men's team (6-7 , 1-7 Eastern Intercollegiate Swimming League) fell 176-124 to the Midshipmen (12-3, 4-3).
"[Gillies] had an unbelievable day," coach Mike Schnur said of the women's team's injured star. "She has a bruise the size of a football on her back. Yet she had an amazing 100-back, an amazing 100-fly, and in the [400-yard freestyle] relay her back went out diving into the pool but she toughed it out."
The importance of that relay pushed her to overcome the injury.
"My back hurt everytime I tried to kick in the last relay, but I knew whoever won the relay won the meet," Gillies said. "I saw the whole team on the sidelines cheering, so I tried to forget the pain and finish the race."
Although this last relay was the key race to the meet, perhaps Gillies' best race was the 100-yard butterfly.
After the first 50 yards, Gillies was beating Navy freshman Mallory Dietrich by .07 seconds. In the second 50, Dietrich outswam Gillies, but only by .05 seconds, allowing Gillies to win with a time of 57.74 to Dietrich's 57.76.
Not only was this the closest race of the season so far, it was also a new personal best for Gillies.
The men's score wasn't that surprising for Schnur, since "we swam slower than I thought we would; I thought we'd compete better today," he said. "We really did not have a good meet."
Gallagher, a junior, didn't look too hard into the loss.
"Our main focus every year is the conference meet," he said. "We train through our dual meets more so than other teams do."
"We're definitely ready for [EISL championship meet]," Gallagher added. "With the way we've been swimming in practice we're setting ourself up for a good meet."
Besides inspiring races by injured swimmers and signs of improvement, these meets were significant since they were the last home meets of the season, and thus Senior Day for the class of 2007 swimmers.
Although the men lost, doing well at the championship meet is still their top goal, so the men weren't too emotional over the loss, Schnur said.
For the women's team, however, the seniors were ecstatic with the win, but Schnur, knowing this was their last meet on home turf, also felt some pangs of sadness.
"It feels terrible," he said. "I want them to stay. I never want to lose them. These nine women have meant so much to our program over the last four years, that I'm miserable they're graduating."
Luckily for Schnur, they're not graduating immediately. The team still has a meet at West Chester this Friday, as well as the Ivy League Championship starting Feb. 15.
