The Penn men’s swimming team capped off its conference season with a sixth-place finish at the Ivy League Championships this weekend at Brown.
After an up-and-down regular season that included only one Ivy League dual meet victory, the Quakers performed consistently at the Championships this weekend. Over the course of three days, Penn accumulated 700 team points, ahead of both Brown (589.5 points) and Cornell (539 points).
The Red and Blue were in sixth place at the end of each day of the tournament. They picked up 201 points during Thursday’s action and had collected 478 total points entering Saturday.
Penn kicked off the competition on Thursday with a school record performance in the 200-meter freestyle relay.
A young squad comprised of freshmen John Germanis and Eric Schultz and sophomores Alex Porter and Dillon McHugh finished fourth in the event. The team’s 1:20.46 time eclipsed the previous school record by over a second.
Chris Swanson also had a strong outing to open his first Ivy League Championships. The Penn freshman continued a string of record-breaking performances for the Quakers with a school-record 4:21.82 finish in the 500-yard freestyle.
The Quakers entered Friday’s events trailing first-place Harvard by 266 points. While Princeton would end up capturing first place at the Championships, with the Crimson taking second, the Red and Blue turned in several more strong performances on Friday and Saturday.
Swanson set another school record on Friday, this time in the final heat of the 1000 free. The rookie’s 9:01.40 shed over nine seconds off the previous school record.
Fellow freshman Brendan Crystal swam a 3:52.30 in the 400 individual medley, setting another Penn record. In the 100 butterfly, junior Rhoads Worster’s time of 47.99 set the third school record of the night for the Quakers.
After the Red and Blue broke four school records on Friday, the Quakers shattered another three marks on Saturday.
Swanson became the first Penn player since 2011 to win an individual event at the Ivy League Championships. The freshman cut nearly 14 seconds off the previous school record in the 1650 free and won the race by close to seven seconds.
Finally, in the 100 free, Porter finished 14th, with a Penn record time of 44.79. That mark was later eclipsed by McHugh, who swam a 44.70 in the first leg of the 400 free relay.
Led by McHugh, the 400 free relay team established a Penn record of their own, closing out the race in 2:58.48.
Though Penn finished in the bottom half of the eight teams competing at the Championships, the strong performances that resulted in 10 new team records should yield plenty of momentum for the Quakers heading into the NCAA Championships.
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