How do the Penn women’s swimming coaches reward their swimmers during the two-week break after sweeping rival Columbia?
“Simple,” coach Mike Schnur said. “Beating the you-know-what out of them.”
Focused on avoiding complacency, the Quakers (2-0, 1-0 Ivy) have spent their bye week working toward their next match — this weekend’s tri-meet against Cornell and powerhouse Princeton. While the team is concerned primarily with February’s Ivy Championships, Schnur has been pushing his swimmers to constantly improve and lower their times.
“We’ve been beating on them every day, and they’ve responded really well,” Schnur said. “We’re interested in going fast in February, so we don’t pull back for dual meets, we just keep training.”
His squad will have two very different racing opportunities this weekend to show their progress. Cornell’s squad, which finished seventh in the Ancient Eight last year, will enter Friday’s meet with the built-in advantage of fast suits. This type of compression swimwear, worn by both the Quakers and Lions in Penn’s rout of Columbia, can significantly better a swimmer’s times, thus giving Cornell (2-1, 1-1) an obvious upper hand .
One thing Cornell does not have is Rochelle Dong, Penn’s sophomore stud . After shattering pool records against Columbia, Dong and her teammates enter the weekend with their focus not on the fast-suited Big Red, but on last year’s Ivy runner-up.
“I think we’ve gone back into intense training mode,” Dong said. “We definitely continued to work hard and train hard to focus on Princeton.”
The Tigers (1-1, 0-0) return several familiar foes that will stand in the way of the Red and Blue winning their first ever Ivy Championship. Though Lisa Boyce , who set multiple Princeton records, has graduated, juniors Nikki Larson, Liz McDonald and Sada Stewart should all return as threats in February.
However, with the championship months away, the Quakers have an interesting opportunity this weekend. Schnur has never beaten Princeton as Penn’s coach, as the Tigers possess one of the most successful programs in the Ivy League. A win this weekend, especially when Penn is not in its fast suits, would be an awesome, albeit very unexpected, indicator of unprecedented success in February.
“If we do happen to beat Princeton, it will be a really big shock for us,” Dong said. “It’ll give us a good sense of where we’ll be at Ivies.”
