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Swimming vs. Delaware Credit: Ilana Wurman , Ilana Wurman, Ilana Wurman

To cap off their regular seasons, the Penn men’s and women’s swimming teams blew past West Chester and La Salle this weekend, hopefully gaining momentum before the Ivy League Championships.

On Friday, the men’s team defeated West Chester 172-122 while winning 11 events. Notably, the Quakers finished one-two-three in both the 1000-yard freestyle and 100-yard backstroke. The 200-yard medley relay team, composed of sophomores Philip Hu and Michael Wen, and juniors Kyle Yu and Eric Schultz, topped the Golden Rams’ time by almost two seconds, and Schultz — one of the team’s captains — added two more victories of his own in the 50-yard freestyle and 100-yard freestyle.

On Saturday, the Quaker men completed their weekend sweep, beating La Salle 160.5-131.5 behind nine event victories. The 200-yard medley relay team again had a strong showing with a first place finish, and Schultz was once again victorious in the 50-yard and 100-yard freestyles.

The highlight of the night came in the 1000-yard freestyle when junior co-captain Chris Swanson set a Kirk Pool record with a time of 9:17.11.

The Red and Blue also swept the 200-yard freestyle and 200-yard breaststoke, and sophomore Kevin Su turned in a second place finish in the 100-yard freestyle behind Schultz.

Coach Mike Schnur was impressed with the men’s team performance.

“Our real focus for the guys was to win. We put our best guys out and saw good results,” said Schnur. “We set some pool records, and I thought the men swam very, very well Friday night.”

The women’s team was just as successful over the weekend, routing West Chester 187-107 on Friday and La Salle 180-117 on Saturday.

Against West Chester, the Quakers took 11 events while featuring a different look.

“Our goal on Friday night was to get a lot of people in the lineup that haven’t had much of a chance to swim this year, and to rely on people whom we haven’t had to rely on,” said Schnur.

“I thought that was really fun. Some of our freshman and senior women really stepped up and did a good job.”

Senior Irene Katopodis and freshman Maggie Heller contributed two wins each on Friday night. Katopodis won the 50-yard and 100-yard freestyle, while Heller came away victorious in the 1 and 3-meter diving events.

Against La Salle, the Quakers again captured 11 events, while rolling out a stronger lineup, according to Schnur.

“We were able to get a couple of really nice tuneup performances,” Schnur said.

One of the notable performances from Saturday came from the 200-yard medley relay A Team — consisting of seniors Lauryn Brown and Taylor Sneed, and sophomores Haley Wickham and Rochelle Dong — which defeated La Salle’s A Team by almost two seconds. In addition,

With the regular season concluded, Schnur is changing his focus to the Ivy Championships, which will be held February 19-21 for the women at Harvard, and February 26-28 for the men at Princeton.

“Now is about the time where we do a lot less work, doing a lot of the little things right. It’s a fun time.”

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