When a team adds another notch to the loss column, the coach isn't usually smiling.
But after the Penn men's swimming team went 1-1 in its dual meet against Princeton and Cornell in New Jersey on Saturday, coach Mike Schnur could not have been more excited.
"This is the best dual meet we swam in forever," he said. "They exploded."
Record-breaking was clearly the theme of Saturday's meet, and the spotlight was on freshmen Brendan McHugh. He was the first swimmer in the water, opening the race as the breastroker in the 200-yard medley relay in place of the injured Chaz Maul, who's out with a broken hand.
Swimming with McHugh were Larkin Macdonald, Brad Farris and Chris Buck - all record holders in their individual events. The stacked lineup broke the Penn record - barely - as their first-place time of 1:31.33 edged out last year's mark by 0.01 seconds.
McHugh wasn't finished. Following the medley relay, he broke Penn's eight-year-old 100-yard breaststroke record with a time of 55.69. Later, he broke the 200-yard breaststoke record from 1993 with a time of 2:00.33.
No one had come close to beating this record for two years.
"He didn't just beat it - he killed it," Schnur said. "Brendan has set himself up to be the number one breaststroker in our league."
Junior James Fee finished the day with two personal bests, with a 4:26.70 in the 500-yard freestyle and a 1:38.20 in the 200 free.
"We were all very impressed by how fast we went," Fee said. "Ever since I've been here, we've never broken a school record at a dual meet."
McHugh was not the only newcomer who impressed on Saturday. Freshman diver Jeff Cragg managed to overcome the freshman curse to place first in the one-meter event and second in the three-meter event.
"Ordinarily, freshmen do not get scored very highly," Schnur said. "There is an inherent bias against freshmen when they do the scoring."
Even though the Red and Blue did exceptionally on an individual level, they were unable to defeat powerhouse Princeton.
"The speed that we swam at on Saturday, we would've beat any other team in the league except Princeton," Schnur said. "We can't have done better than that."
