Yale losses tempered by wins over Green

If there's a silver lining in every cloud, freshman Sara Coenen provided one Saturday for the Penn women's swim team.

In the Quakers' tri-meet versus Yale and Dartmouth, the freshman phenom broke another set of records, this time both the school and pool records in the 100- and 200-yard backstroke with times of 56.91 and 2:01.09, respectively. Unfortunately it wasn't enough as the Quakers came in second, losing to Yale 196.50-102 but beating Dartmouth 233-67 on Saturday at Sheerr Pool.

Meanwhile, the Penn men's team had a similar finish, falling to Yale 168-132 but triumphing over Dartmouth 231.5-68.5.

"It was exciting to get better times," Coenen said of her record breaking performance, "but I try not to think about it too much."

Despite the highlights, the Penn women (10-4, 4-3 Ivy League) weren't able to capitalize and beat Yale (7-0, 3-0), the team's only roadblock to accomplishing its stated goal of third place in the Ivies.

"There's a little bit of disappointment since everyone was on a high after we beat Columbia and Brown," Coenen said - two of the Quakers' biggest competitors for third. "At the same time, it was nice to see everyone swimming so well after being beaten up [in practice] for the last couple of weeks."

Coach Mike Schnur, however, believes the loss will give the team extra incentive to work harder for the season-ending Ivy League Championship meet in February.

"The loss doesn't [negatively] affect us in terms of the end of the year," he said. "I hope the loss makes the girls a little angry, a little more focused and little bit hungier."

Although the loss clearly was a negative, Schnur was able to see some positives in the meet.

"We're on track to do a great job at [the Ivy Championship meet]," he said. "We've had some tough injuries, but a lot of women who we didn't think would be in the positions they are are doing a great job. We have a lot of women who are stepping up."

For the men's team (6-6, 1-6 EISL), the win over Dartmouth guaranteed that it won't finish last in the Eastern Intercollegiate Swimming League, comprised of the men's swim teams from the Ivies and Navy.

Despite this signific ance of the win, "the men don't look at it that way," Schnur said. "They've been training real hard, and we had some great races today."

Now that the Quakers have a convincing win under their belt, they will go into the rest of the season with confidence.

"It was a good win over Dartmouth," sophomore John Gillette said. "We got first and second in most of the races. The win definitely gives us momentum going into our final races."

Just like with the women's result, Schnur saw some encouraging signs with the men's team, as it swam better than it did against Brown last week.

"They're progressing faster than I thought they would be," he said. "They swam a lot faster than I thought they would today."

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