As Super Bowl Sunday approaches, the Penn swim team hopes to have a super weekend of its own in the pool.
The men (2-5) and women (3-5) will travel to West Chester on Friday to take on the Golden Rams in a dual meet. On Saturday, both squads will face off with La Salle. These will mark the first meets after a lengthy layoff from competition for both Red and Blue squads, who last swam at Brown on Jan. 19.
Both teams were short-handed due to injuries from the previous meet in Providence, but the Quakers will boast a much healthier lineup for Saturday.
With the weekend slate marking a break in Ivy competition, Penn has a chance to pull together against some local rivals.
“At this point in the season, so much of what we’re doing is preparing for their last swims at the end of the season,” coach Mike Schnur said. “Some of the women and men, at this point, are still getting pounded at practice, so we’ll see what they do.”
With prestigious invitational events like Cavalier Invite at the University of Virginia coming up, the Quakers are also hoping to make a few individual splashes as well and earn a couple of invitations.
“Well, there are always a few spots for the Ivy Team that are left, so you always look for people to step up and try to make a statement,” sophomore Dillon McHugh said. “You can always make a statement in a dual meet.”
With the matchups against the Golden Rams and Explorers occurring on consecutive days, Schnur plans to split his squads up to get as many Red and Blue swimmers in the pool as possible.
“On Friday night when we swim West Chester, we’re actually going to leave some people home to train because I don’t want them to miss a day of practice, and they’ll swim at LaSalle,” Schnur said. “We’re going to try to move the squads around to give everyone a chance to go to at least one or two meets this weekend.”
With so many Quakers getting chances to swim this weekend, there will be plenty of names on both teams to keep a close eye on.
If there is any one swimmer who has stood out among the rest on the women’s team this season, it has been junior Shelby Fortin.
The veteran, who already owns five school records, has set two this season in the 100- and 1650-yard freestyle.
On the men’s side, McHugh has been as good as anyone for the Quakers, setting a personal best in the 100 free with a time of 45.75 seconds and approaching career-best times in his three other events.
If the Red and Blue can keep it up, they very well may find themselves in Charlottesville in just a few weeks’ time.
“I think we’re just trying to stay consistent at this point in time,” sophomore Eric Vanden Noort said. “As a whole, we’re going to try to go out there and swim fast, and try to just keep hitting the times that we’ve been hitting recently.”
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