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(04/04/00 9:00am)
Swimmers want him to stay on The fate of Penn interim swimming coach Mike Schnur and of the Penn swimming program should be determined within the next two weeks or so, and it could be decided by as early as Thursday or Friday of this week. According to sources within the Penn Athletic Department, a decision on whether to retain Schnur or hire a new coach for the Quakers will come next week, if not later this week. One source indicated that whoever was hired would take the reins of both squads, representing no change from the way the program has been run under Schnur and his predecessor, Kathy Lawlor-Gilbert. Schnur, who led both the men's team and women's team to improved seasons in his one-year interim tenure, is considered in the running for the permanent position with several other candidates. "It'll be over real soon," Schnur said, adding that he felt he was treated fairly during the process and that he was happy with the way in which it proceeded. Penn women's captain Cathy Holland, who is on the coaching search committee, said that a decision would come within two to three weeks, and "maybe even sooner than that." Holland, along with junior Blake Martin, captain of the men's team, were both named to the committee charged with finding a permanent head coach. While she did not reveal which candidate she and Martin recommended to the rest of the committee, she did say that her and Martin's recommendation had been made. She also said that the committee will make a final recommendation to Penn Athletic Director Steve Bilsky. "We were there to give [them] the pulse of the team and the input from the team," Holland said of the reason she and Martin were selected to join the search. If this is so, then it is likely that Holland and Martin have recommended that Schnur be retained, as other swimmers on the team believe he should be. "I wouldn't know [who they recommended], but I can assume they've recommended that Mike Schnur stay," senior swimmer Nick Sheremeta said. "I think it should stay how it is, with Schnur as coach. He's been here for I don't know how many years now, and he knows the program pretty well. "It certainly has changed from last year, just the enthusiasm on the team, and I think the quality of swimming got better this year also?. I think it's a general consensus with everyone that they agree that Mike should be the coach. He's well liked by everyone, and he knows everyone real well. I don't think there's anyone who could object against [his hiring]." Schnur, who swam for Penn in the mid-1980s and had been a Penn assistant coach since the 1992 season, ascended to the interim head coach position in September in the wake of longtime coach Lawlor-Gilbert's shocking retirement announcement. Despite disappointing finishes at Easterns -- the men finished ninth out of 10 while the women finished last -- both teams experienced success last season under Schnur's tutelage. The men's team was competitive throughout its entire slate, going 7-5 (4-5 EISL) -- a marked improvement over the previous year's squad, which went 4-7 (2-7) under Lawlor-Gilbert. On the other side of the pool, the women's team experienced a veritable renaissance. They broke their notorious 42-meet Ivy losing streak by beating their first opponent of the year -- Cornell -- en route to two Ivy league victories.
(04/03/00 9:00am)
Penn swept Yale and split games with Brown to open Ivy League play. Despite the Penn baseball team's shaky play in two losses against Temple and Lafayette last week, Penn coach Bob Seddon believed that his Quakers would rise to the level of play that Ivy competition demanded of them. He was right. The Quakers (11-10, 3-1 Ivy) kicked off their conference schedule this weekend with a bang, winning three of their four games in two doubleheaders against Ivy foes Yale and Brown. The Red and Blue find themselves tied with Columbia at the top of the Lou Gehrig division. Penn's victories were marked by strong pitching, something that had eluded them of late. All four of the Quakers' weekend starters made it to at least the sixth inning, and Mike Mattern, in his six-inning stint in Brown's 4-3 triumph yesterday, was the only one of the four to give up more than three earned runs. Most impressive was freshman Ben Otero's pitching line. Starting instead of fellow freshman Andrew McCreery, who was flu-ridden, Otero gave up two earned runs on two hits in a nine-inning complete game victory in the second game of the doubleheader with Brown yesterday. "I'm not surprised Otero pitched well, but to go nine innings, I wouldn't have expected that," Seddon said. "I would've thought he would've needed some help because he hasn't gone that far in a game this year." Otero handcuffed the Bears, giving up one run in the third that put Brown on the scoreboard first and one run in the eighth that cut the Penn lead to 9-2 -- the eventual final score. While revenge might be a dish best served cold, Otero's victory in the nightcap redressed the fresh wounds suffered by the Quakers in the first game of the doubleheader with the Bears. In that first game, Mattern went to the mound in the seventh and final inning with a 3-1 lead. But Mattern gave up three consecutive singles, allowing the Bears to cut Penn's lead to 3-2. Freshman Paul Grumet was brought on to replace Mattern and was given the unenviable task of extinguishing Brown's threat. After striking out Brown second baseman Dan Spring, Grumet was tagged by third baseman Rick Lynn for a single that dribbled its way through the right side of the infield, tying the score at three. Third baseman Glen Ambrosius, who had moved from shortstop to replace the injured Zack Hanan, committed an error and allowed Brown catcher Greg Metzger to score the go-ahead and eventual winning run. Mattern was tagged with the loss and fell to 0-2 on the season. "He pitched a good game," Seddon said. "It was unfortunate." The Quakers were anything but unfortunate on Saturday, as they beat up on the Elis to open their weekend with a doubleheader sweep. In the first game, Penn was able to come back from a three-run deficit in the fifth and sixth innings and win, 5-3. Mark Lacerenza went the distance for a seven-inning complete game victory. Yale pitcher Matt McCarthy did not surrender a hit until that fifth inning, when he was rocked by catcher Jeff Gregorio's solo homer to dead center. Gregorio then tied the game in the sixth when his bases-loaded single off reliever Doug Feller scored two. Ambrosius then stole third and scored on Yale catcher Darren Beasley's throwing error, giving Penn a lead it would hold for good. Right fielder Chris May, back from a groin injury, singled to drive in Gregorio and give the Quakers an insurance run. In the second game, Yale starting pitcher Sudha Reddy was chased out after 2 2/3 innings after giving up six runs -- three earned -- and Penn cruised to a 9-1 win. In his first collegiate start, freshman Benjamin Krantz went seven innings and gave up only one unearned run on two hits, six walks and nine strikeouts. Fellow freshman Nick Italiano contributed with three hits and two RBI. "It's a long season, it's a long 20 games, and we've only played four," Seddon said of the still-youthful Ivy season. "But it's nice to know you got off to a good start."
(03/31/00 10:00am)
Penn plays four games this weekend in doubleheaders with Yale and Brown. The friendly confines of Murphy Field await the return of the Penn baseball team this weekend. For the Quakers, it's not a moment too soon. After a rough two-game road trip this week that consisted of two one-run losses to Temple on Tuesday and Lafayette on Wednesday, Penn (8-9) will open its Ivy League schedule tomorrow at Murphy Field with a doubleheader against Yale (8-14) at 11:30 a.m. The Quakers hope that a return to their home stadium, which yielded three wins in five tries before they hit the road this week, will help to solve their various ills. Against both the Elis and Brown (6-11), which visits Philadelphia for a double-dip on Sunday at noon, the Quakers will need better performances from their pitchers in order to avoid falling in their first Ivy games of the season. Penn hurlers walked 13 Lafayette batters on Wednesday. Against top Ancient Eight competition, that sort of production is likely to lead to further defeat. However, Penn coach Bob Seddon is confident that the Quakers will rise to the challenge that Ivy play sets out for them. "On the weekend, you're going to see a game like [against Temple] or against Northern Iowa," he said, referring to two of Penn's close losses in tight games. "Usually against the real good teams in a league setting, your team steps up and really plays well? because they have to." Last season, the Quakers lost three of four on the road to Yale and Brown. Their only win was against the Elis, a 13-7 decision on April 10. Penn dropped the second game of that afternoon's doubleheader and traveled to Brown the next day to lose by a combined score of 27-5 over two games, the latter match a 19-1 drubbing. Such weekends were the norm for the Quakers last year, as they won a paltry six Ivy games while dropping 14. However, all of the teams in the Ivy League have been characterized by mediocre-to-poor starts this year. While many Ivy teams have played tougher non-conference schedules than the Quakers -- Yale, which visited Kentucky, ranked 27th in the country by the Collegiate Baseball Newspaper Poll, and Brown included -- the fact remains that the Elis and Bears will walk into Murphy Field with records of 8-14 and 6-11, respectively. "The Ivy League, if you look at the standings, good God," Seddon said. But while Yale's record may be subpar, the Elis' play of late has not been. Yale invades Philadelphia on a three-game winning streak after Wednesday's 15-4 New Haven mauling of 14-4 Marist. The Elis received solid pitching in their victory, something that could stop Penn's potent offensive attack -- the only thing that has been working for the Quakers lately. Yale is led by 1998 Ivy Player of the Year and 1999 first team All-Ivy shortstop Tony Coyne, who homered Wednesday. Despite being hindered with a knee injury last season, Coyne managed to hit .417 and led the Elis with six home runs. The Quakers will also have to deal with senior Brian Ivy, who transferred from Yale to the University of Texas as a sophomore, only to return to the Elis for this, his final collegiate season. As a freshman in 1997, he led Yale in batting. The aptly named Ivy also notched three hits against the Red Foxes on Wednesday. Brown, on the other hand, split a doubleheader at VMI (12-16) on Tuesday, winning by the score of 16-7 in the first game before falling in the nightcap, 10-7. The next day, those two teams faced off again, with Brown beating the Keydets, 8-6. On Sunday, the Bears will bring their considerable offensive weapons to bear on Penn. A good chunk of that offense comes in the form of the Bears' double-play combination, senior second baseman Jeff Lawler and junior shortstop Dan Kantrovitz. Lawler is a first team All-Ivy selection who set a school record for hits last year with 52. Kantrovitz, also a first team All-Ivy selection, led the Ivies with 32 hits in Ivy League games, including 10 doubles. He also led the Ancient Eight in hitting last year with a .478 batting average. To counteract these threats, the Quakers will send sophomore pitcher Mark Lacerenza to the mound in the first game against Yale tomorrow, and Andrew McCreery will start the second game on the mound. Seddon said that McCreery was pitching in tomorrow's second game so that he would be able to be used as an outfielder in the first game -- he would have a sore arm Sunday if he pitched the first game and patrolled center field in the second. Sunday, Mike Mattern will take the ball for Penn in the first game against Brown, while Ben Krantz will probably start the nightcap. Mattern pitched well on Tuesday at Veterans Stadium, somewhat easing Seddon's concerns after his shaky outing in the Murphy Field opener against St. Joseph's last week. "The stage is set," Seddon said. "[The] experimentation is over."
(03/30/00 10:00am)
The Quakers lost at Lafayette by a familiar margin -just one run. Another day, another tough one-run defeat. After falling to Temple Tuesday afternoon at Veterans Stadium by the closest of margins -- 5-4 in 10 innings -- the Penn baseball team traveled to cold and windy Easton, Pa., yesterday to try and wash the bitter aftertaste of falling to the Owls out of its collective mouth. It didn't work out that way. With a 10-9 loss to Lafayette marked by shaky pitching and fundamentals, the Quakers fell to 8-9 on the season and are left to ponder the missed chances at victory that have defined their week. The Quakers jumped out to an early 3-1 lead on the strength of sophomore catcher Brian Fitzgerald's two-RBI single to right-center field in Penn's three-run second inning. It was a lead Penn would not hold for long. Lafayette shortstop Vince D'Angelis' single to right-center field in the bottom half of the inning scored right fielder Russ Giglio, cutting Penn's lead to a scant one run. After going two innings and giving up one earned run, Penn starting pitcher Greg Lee was lifted in the third to help set up this weekend's pitching slate for the Quakers. His replacement was Nick Barnhorst, who didn't last long. With one out, Barnhorst walked Lafayette designated hitter Niko Palos and third baseman Bob Osipower. After first baseman Matt Tambellini reached on a fielder's choice, knocking out Osipower at second base and advancing Palos to third. A passed ball charged to Fitzgerald scored Palos and sent Tambellini to second. This turn of events seemed to unnerve Barnhorst, who walked the next three batters, forcing home a run in the person of Tambellini. Barnhorst was lifted in favor of promising freshman Ben Otero, who got D'Angelis to end the inning by flying out to left with the bases loaded. While Lafayette missed a chance to break the game wide open, they would never trail again. "He was horrendous," Penn coach Bob Seddon said of Barnhorst. "Nick could not find the plate. It seems like when something goes wrong, we break down. In other words, first inning, first batter, line drive to third base, and it's not caught. Then we break down -- a walk or a hit. We're not strong when we have something negative go wrong?. After a goof, we have to be more focused." In the Leopards' next turn at bat, they would make the Quakers pay dearly for their mistakes. With two outs, Otero struck out Palos swinging, seemingly ending the inning. But Fitzgerald let the ball get away -- his second passed ball of the game -- and Palos was able to reach first base. Lafayette took advantage of its new lease on life. After Palos reached base, Osipower homered to right, driving himself and his teammate in. Not to be outdone, Tambellini immediately followed Osipower's blast with one of his own, a solo shot to center that gave the Leopards a 7-3 lead. The Quakers got two back in the top of the fifth when shortstop Glen Ambrosius' fielder's choice scored second baseman Nick Italiano. A wild pitch by Brendan McDonough later in the inning scored designated hitter James Mullen, who had reached base earlier on a fielder's choice of his own. In the sixth, the Quakers had a chance to score when Brian Fitzgerald stood on third with one out. But left fielder Jeremy McDowell ran into a tag on a ground ball by Italiano to initiate a double play that ended the inning before the run could score from third. "We did some stupid things that become highlighted when you've given up a lot of runs," Seddon said. "If you weren't giving up all those runs, you wouldn't really notice those little things. They hurt us." The Leopards put the game away in their half of the sixth. After Otero held Lafayette to one hit in the fifth, Dan Fitzgerald was brought on to pitch and was shaky, walking three batters and plunking one with a pitch. With two outs and runners on first and second, Jon Kline pinch hit for catcher Jason Carlough and squeezed a single through the left side, loading the bases. Giglio singled to left, scoring two and giving the Leopards a 9-5 lead. After walking the next batter to reload the bases, Fitzgerald hit D'Angelis, forcing in another run. While Fitzgerald got out of the bases-loaded jam by getting center fielder Tye Gonser to pop out to him, the damage had been done, and Lafayette had the runs they would eventually need to prevail. With right fielder Kevin McCabe's three-run homer in the top of the seventh, Penn cut the deficit to 10-8 and put themselves in an excellent position -- with Brian Burket and Ben Krantz holding Lafayette scoreless in relief in the seventh and eighth, Penn only needed to score two runs over the final two innings to pull even with the Leopards. In a slugfest such as yesterday's contest, this seemed to be an achievable feat. However, the runs Penn needed to avoid defeat never materialized. After the Quakers cut the Lafayette lead to 10-9 in the eighth inning, they looked to be poised to take the lead in the ninth. With darkness encroaching upon the field, pitcher Ross Butler walked McCabe and center fielder Andrew McCreery to start the final frame. But Brian Fitzgerald's bunt rocketed back to the box, and Butler was able to force out McCabe at third. Butler settled down and struck out first baseman Ron Rolph and left fielder Jeremy McDowell to end the game with the tying run in scoring position. "Even though they're scoring a lot of runs, they're not getting clutch hits," Seddon said. "You can't put it all on the pitchers, and the offense knows that. You can't [have] a man on second, one out in the eighth inning and don't get him in and man on second, no outs in the ninth inning and don't get him in when you try and tie a game. "We're out of sync. We're not making the plays we have to."
(03/24/00 10:00am)
Fans enjoyed free peanuts and Cracker Jack, and the field was in good shape. With the gigantic, smiling face of Will Smith looking down upon it on a warm, sunny spring afternoon, how could anything have gone wrong at the first game played at the Penn Baseball Stadium at Murphy Field? As it turned out, nothing went wrong for the Penn baseball team, as it made its Murphy Field debut a memorable one with a Smith-adorned billboard for a local radio station looking on. The Quakers overcame a five-run deficit in their last at-bat to beat St. Joseph's, 13-12. The glistening new ballpark's debut was just as successful. While the 263 Quakers supporters who attended the game were chomping on free peanuts and Cracker Jack provided by the Penn Athletic Department, the newness of the field they were watching caused few problems. For instance, the brand new turf on the infield grass kept ground balls down for the most part -- much to the delight of the infielders on both sides. The excellent condition of the field was due to the work of Penn head groundskeeper Tony Overend and his crew, who arrived at the field at 7:30 yesterday morning to iron out any last wrinkles before the 3 p.m. game. "The guys worked pretty hard, the crew I have," Overend said. "It all came together, it was a good job. And we got the 'W.' That makes it a little bit more sweeter." But rarely does any new turf lack irregularities. This became painfully apparent to the Quakers during the Hawks' five-run fifth inning that gave them a 9-4 lead over the Quakers. A ground ball smashed to Penn third baseman Oliver Hahl took a bad hop on the new infield grass and bounced over his outstretched glove as he was diving to his right. Hahl felt that it was probably the rough new turf that caused the ball to skip into left field, allowing one run to score. "[It] sucked," Hahl said. "I was pissed about it." One thing about which the Quakers weren't upset was the early verdict on the relatively small Murphy Field -- it seems to be a hitter's ballpark. The game's first homerun was a fourth inning monster shot to dead center field off the bat of St. Joe's first baseman Tim Gunn, who had not hit a home run all season. Penn's $2-million launching pad eventually paid dividends, as the first Quakers homerun at Murphy Field -- a three-run shot by Anthony Napolitano -- was a crucial step in their six-run eighth inning comeback. "As you can see, there were balls flying out of here like crazy," Penn right fielder Kevin McCabe said. "We took advantage of the last one. But our pitchers are going to have to keep the ball down." While Murphy Field has the potential to reward hitters, it also has the potential to distract them. Cars buzz along the Schuylkill Expressway, which towers above the outfield. In the late afternoon, while home plate is still in sunlight, the pitcher's mound is shrouded in the shadow cast by the huge water cooling plant that looms over the field on the first base line. "I really didn't think it was that bad. You know, Bower [Field] had the trains and the cars, so it's something that we're used to," McCabe said, referring to the Quakers' previous home. "The sun didn't seem too bad. There were shadows in the middle of the field, but you could see the ball fine coming out of the pitcher's hand." Penn coach Bob Seddon, however, thinks that the expressway beyond the outfield might pose a problem for some players. "A couple of the hitters said that the backdrop is not quite high enough," he said. "When a [pitcher's] arm is up, you see a car behind the arm." The hitters aren't the only ones who might be distracted. Penn shortstop Glen Ambrosius said that the stands and the nets that protect the spectators can make fielding tricky. "There were a few times where the guy flied it back, and I thought it was a fly ball coming out into play. It's really tough on the fly balls," he said. "I actually felt they should have named the field Will Smith Field at Q102 Stadium. We need to get a Penn baseball sign up there or something like that," said McCabe, who faces the sign while playing right field. "I was joking around with the guys, saying, 'If you ever lose focus, look at the smiling Will Smith and you can't be upset.' But obviously, you can't have everything be perfect with the field. "I like Will Smith," he added. Yesterday, Will Smith wasn't the only one who was liked. Everybody praised the success of Murphy Field and of those who put it together. St. Joe's was disappointed when the game was called after the eighth on account of darkness. Murphy Field is still without lights. "What they've done here for us is wonderful," Seddon said. "The operations staff and the athletic staff, what they've done for us here is unbelievable. Everybody worked day and night to get the field ready to go. That's a first class operation."
(03/21/00 10:00am)
In the land of oranges and senior citizens, another season began for the Penn baseball team last week. The Quakers kicked off their 2000 campaign with five wins and five losses on their Florida road trip over spring break. The Quakers' .500 record after their first 10 games constitutes a marked and encouraging improvement over last year, when they played their first nine games in California and finished 2-8 in their first 10. But Penn coach Bob Seddon is quick to point out that last year's early season schedule was much tougher than this year's. "This schedule, there were some tough teams, but it doesn't compare with last year's schedule," he said. "However, this is a much better team than last year's team. This team really has a future." The journey to that future began on March 10, when the Quakers opened the season against Florida Tech in Melbourne. Though the Quakers pounded out 11 hits -- three of them off the bat of senior catcher Jeff Gregorio, including a two-run triple in the seventh inning that put Penn ahead 8-4 -- their pitching and defense eventually abandoned them. The Quakers, who issued nine walks in the game, wilted in the eighth inning as freshman relief pitcher Ben Otero and fellow fireman Dan Fitzgerald -- who was hit with the loss -- walked four Panthers and hit two batters in the process of giving up six runs on the way to a 10-8 loss. "We let that game get away, mainly on pitchers who couldn't throw the ball over the plate," Seddon said. "Defensively, we had a good trip. We had a few errors in the first game. That didn't do us in. It was the wildness of our pitchers." The Quakers gained revenge against Florida Tech the next day as they outslugged the Panthers, 17-15. Freshman John McCreery and shortstop Glen Ambrosius, a senior tri-captain, hit homeruns in a nine-run fourth that erased a 7-0 deficit for the Quakers. Penn pitcher Matt Hepler left the game in the bottom of the inning after surrendering four runs without giving up a hit, but the Quakers went ahead for good in the next frame with seven runs -- including a triple off the bat of McCreery. On March 12, Penn traveled to Daytona and split a doubleheader, trouncing Northern Illinois, which went 4-51 in 1999, while falling to Northern Iowa -- the Quakers' best opponent on the trip -- in the day's second game, 5-3. In the first game, Ambrosius -- who is hitting .341 in 44 at-bats with a .500 slugging percentage -- launched a three-run homer in the first inning, and freshman Kevin Wells shut the door on Northern Illinois, giving up one run on one hit in 3 2/3 innings after relieving McCreery, who had given up four runs in 5 1/3 innings. Penn fell to 2-2 in the nightcap, as Northern Iowa's Brady Weber stroked an RBI single to break a 2-2 tie and put the Panthers on top for good. In the ninth, the Quakers threatened to tie the score when they had men on second and third with two outs. But left fielder Jim Mullen grounded hard to short, ending the game. The next night, Penn barely escaped with a win over Cortland State, 9-8. Junior Chris May tallied a triple and a homerun, the latter occurring in a fifth inning that saw the Quakers jump out to an 8-3 lead. Otero gave the Quakers a quality start, going six innings and giving up two earned runs. However, it took freshman Paul Grumet to shut down the surging Cortland State squad in the ninth to save the game for the Red and Blue. "He's got great potential," Seddon said of Otero. The Quakers split another doubleheader on March 14, as they fell to Tiffin in the first game, 8-6, before defeating Northern Illinois, 8-4, for the second time. In the latter game, sophomore Greg Lee was impressive in his first collegiate start, striking out 12 and giving up three runs in eight innings of work. "Greg Lee is a very, very pleasant addition," Seddon said. "He has emerged into a probable starting position. However, that was only one game. We'll see [him in his] next game." In Winter Park the next night, Penn fell to Rollins, 13-8, to fall to 4-4. Penn fell behind early, but cut a six-run deficit to one run before Rollins pinch hitter Ryan Park put the game away with a grand slam homerun in the bottom of the seventh. Sophomore catcher Brian Fitzgerald's solo homerun to left-center field in the top of the ninth lifted the Quakers to a 9-8 victory over Eckerd in St. Petersburg on March 16. But Penn fell back to .500 two days later, blowing a 7-5 lead in the ninth to Army in Tampa. Michael Cooper beat the Quakers with a one-out bases-loaded single in the ninth off of Otero, who suffered the loss after his strong showing against Cortland State. "We should have won another two games on the trip," Seddon said. "We didn't pitch. We have to pitch better to win in our league. We didn't hold opposing runners on well, and opponents stole on us far too frequently Those are the things we have to work on." However, this does not mean Seddon isn't happy with his team's performance. "Any time you come back even from Florida or any spring trip, you pretty much feel pretty good about that," he said. Seddon added that he was heartened by the Quakers' offensive production on the trip, as they averaged 8.5 runs per game. Penn will open its home season on Thursday, when it hosts St. Joseph's in the first game ever at the new stadium at Murphy Field.
(03/09/00 10:00am)
There are no cornfields in West Philadelphia. That much is apparent when surveying Penn's brand new baseball diamond. Unlike the fictional Field of Dreams that Kevin Costner built, the Penn Baseball Field at Murphy Field is flanked not by maize but by the Schuylkill Expressway and a gigantic water cooling plant. In a way, though, the new addition to Murphy Field is Penn's own field of dreams -- despite the absence of corn and ghosts. Tucked away near the intersection of the Expressway and University Avenue, Murphy Field is a veritable urban oasis, dwarfed by the concrete landscape that nearly engulfs it. Towering above the outfield is the Expressway, smugly inviting some poor batter to try to swat a Ruthian shot over the net that surrounds the field and protects passing vehicles. The water cooling plant stands equally as imposing and smug on the first-base line, waiting for its chance to blot out the setting sun in the waning hours of daylight and shroud Murphy Field in shadows. The plant will also serve as a temporary clubhouse for the Quakers, and Penn hopes that it can be used as a true locker room when funds to convert the building into one become available. Nowhere near as garish as that which surrounds it, the ballpark at Murphy Field is a snug little facility that will be able to seat 850 in its green, stadium-style seats when the Quakers open their home schedule on March 23 against St. Joseph's. What those in attendance that day might see is saliva dripping from the mouths of right-handed hitters as the left-field foul pole 289 feet away provides them with an inviting target. On the other side of the ballpark's asymmetrical outfield, the right field foul pole is 317 feet away from home plate, and it would take a blast of 385 feet to hit the outfield wall in dead center field. Penn coach Bob Seddon said that the fences at Murphy are 12 feet high, and that if the five-foot high fences at Bower Field -- the Quakers' previous home -- were moved to the front of its warning track, the dimensions would be what they are now at Murphy Field. "It's a hitter's park," Seddon said. "I'd like to play there. You jerk the ball down the left field line, you're going to make collegiate baseball. You're going to hit some homeruns." The thing that impresses Seddon the most about the Quakers' new home, however, is how Murphy Field makes things easier than in past years. "There are a lot of amenities we haven't had before," Seddon said. "For a lot of years, I had to get down to [Bower] at 8:30 in the morning and carry out of my trunk the scoreboard box, hook it into the dugout, walk out and hook it into [the] left field [scoreboard], turn on the switch. I had to go through my routine. But, you know, a lot of that stuff now is going to be where you push a button up in the press box. There's going to be a lot of pluses there, and we never had that." Such luxuries would not have been possible without an anonymous donation to the Penn Athletic Department in 1998. The money accounted for most of the funds required to build the new ballpark at Murphy Field. Most of the other monies were acquired during a silent auction of sports memorabilia at a banquet in November held to honor the 30 years that Seddon has manned the Quakers' helm. Now, with two weeks remaining until Penn's home opener, Murphy Field is raw. Construction materials are strewn about the diamond as workers install the fences of the right field bullpen. In the late afternoon, the diminishing light of the sun makes Murphy Field look more like a forgotten relic than a baseball diamond that has yet to see its first game. The luxury-press box behind home plate is but an empty concrete shell, as are the dugouts. There is yet work to do, but not much. "You could play right now, if you really had to," Seddon said. "[But] it has to be rolled [smooth]?. They could get it ready in two days if we had a game this weekend." One word, barely readable under the dust from building materials, is painted in blue on the red concrete that borders the home place circle in foul territory. "PENNSYLVANIA," it reads. Slowly but surely, a ballpark nears its day in the West Philly sun.
(03/03/00 10:00am)
They won an Ivy League championship together. They won a national championship together. Now, the top five members of the Penn women's squash team will eschew team glory for the pursuit of the individual kind -- even if it's at the expense of a fellow Quaker. Today, 64 women's squash players from across the nation will begin the hunt for the individual national championship at the the Intercollegiate Championships at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass. The tournament, which concludes Sunday, will feature competition from Penn senior Katie Patrick, who has played all season at the No. 1 position for the Quakers. Patrick -- who reached the semifinals of the Intercollegiate Championships last year when the event was held at Penn's Ringe Courts -- is the tournament's sixth seed and will face Dartmouth's Lindsey Bishop today at 9 a.m. Because of Patrick's ranking, her experience and her past success in the Intercollegiate Championships, some feel that she might come home with a title. "I think Katie [Patrick] has a chance of maybe winning it," said Penn junior Megan Fuller, who did not make the trip to the tournament. "If she plays well and stays focused, she has a very good chance of winning." The Quakers' other representatives are freshman Runa Reta -- who will compete as the championships' eighth seed -- and juniors Rina Borromeo, Helen Bamber and Lauren Patrizio, who will occupy the 13th, 14th and 26th rankings, respectively. "They might all be better than their rankings portray," Fuller said, referring to the Quakers who have enjoyed two weeks of rest since clinching the national title. "I think they're better players in terms of their rankings. I think Katie, for instance, should definitely be higher than sixth." In first-round action today, Reta will face off against Brown's Katherine Esselen at 10:30 a.m., while Borromeo will clash with Katharine Stickney of Trinity at 9:30 a.m. Bamber will face off against Harvard's Virginia Brown at 10 a.m., and Patrizio, who has battled knee problems all season, will face Abigail Drachman-Jones of Dartmouth at 11 a.m. The Intercollegiate Championships is not a team tournament but a tournament of individual competition, so the Quakers who made the trek to Massachusetts know that every woman is in it for herself -- even if two Quakers meet in battle at some point in the tournament. "They're competitors," Fuller said of such a scenario. "You kind of have to forget who you're playing and just play squash." The Quakers are no strangers to championship tournaments. It was two short weeks ago that the Quakers travelled to Yale to take part in the Howe Cup national championship tournament and returned to Philadelphia as owners of a perfect season record and a first-ever national crown.
(03/02/00 10:00am)
Until November rolls around, there will be no more meets or tournaments for the Penn women's swimming team -- the 1999-2000 season is in the books. Posterity will remember that the Quakers went 6-6 overall, with a 2-5 Ivy League record and a dead last eighth-place finish at the Ivy Championships. But make no mistake -- to a program that had long been wallowing in the deep end of Sheerr Pool, this season was a life buoy thrown just in time. Penn coach Mike Schnur knows which moment to point to as the one in which that buoy hit the water -- it is the one by which he will always remember the season. On November 20, the Quakers did something they had not done in 42 tries and nearly seven years -- they won an Ivy League meet, edging Cornell in their season opener by a score of 153-145. "The best moment was the 15 seconds right after we won the 400 medley relay against Cornell," Schnur said, referring to the meet's clinching event. "The reaction of the women, I think, is the epitome of the whole season. Just seeing them on the side so happy to win the meet was something I'll never forget." While it was only one win, the victory over the Big Red established that the Quakers' 1999-2000 record would be better than those in the putrid, winless Ivy seasons that were the norm for most of the 1990s. Penn knew that its season would be different than previous ones long before its demons were laid to rest. In September, longtime coach Kathy Lawlor-Gilbert shocked her team and the rest of the Penn athletic community when she announced her retirement and left the reins of the program in the hands of Schnur, one of her assistant coaches since the beginning of the 1992-93 season. Schnur, officially the interim head coach, put the team through an extremely rigorous training schedule, the peak of which was achieved over winter break. The expressed purpose of this intensive regimen was to prepare Penn to face Dartmouth, which was considered to be the Quakers' only other realistically beatable Ivy foe. Penn's preparation paid off. After falling behind by nearly 45 points, the Red and Blue rallied at Dartmouth to claim their second -- and final -- Ivy win of the season on January 29. Penn's penchant for making comebacks was but one of the positive things Schnur noticed in his team this season. "We improved a lot," he said. "We improved the work ethic of the team, I think we're in a lot better shape physically than we were last year. I think the women's team trained a lot harder than they did last year, and I think our talent level is better. The freshman class adds a lot to the team." The freshman class included Jessica Anders, who made it to the 50 freestyle finals last Thursday at the Ivy Championships -- the first Quaker to do so since 1997 -- and Kate Patrizzi, who quickly became one of the most valuable swimmers in Penn's arsenal alongside junior captain Cathy Holland. Schnur foresees an influx of similarly talented freshman classes in years to come, and he pointed out that five of his 10 early decision recruits swim regular times in certain events that are faster than current school records in those events. He also added that distance swimming and diving -- two areas in which Penn is weak -- would be future recruiting priorities. Although Schnur's position is precarious -- he is still interim head coach and the search for a permanent head coach will heat up now that the season has concluded -- he is excited about next year, especially since Columbia will be particularly weakened due to the loss of Olympian Christina Teuscher to graduation. "With a few breaks here and there, a few more recruits come, I think we're at the level where our goal for [next] year should be to focus on not just [beating] Dartmouth and Cornell, but to also add Columbia and possibly even Yale to that mix," Schnur said. "I can't wait."
(02/25/00 10:00am)
The Quakers had their best first day at the Ivy Championships in a very long time yesterday. The past four months have been extremely encouraging for the Penn women's swimming team. Under interim coach Mike Schnur, the Quakers finished the regular season at .500 overall, and were able to notch victories over Cornell and Dartmouth after failing to win a single Ivy League meet in the past seven years. Now, Penn has a chance to put a cherry on top of their season's hot-fudge sundae as it competes at the Ivy League Championships at Harvard this weekend. The meet commenced yesterday morning and will continue until tomorrow evening. Yesterday, preliminaries and finals were held for six events -- the 200-yard freestyle relay, the 500 free, the 200 individual medley, the 50 free, the one-meter diving event and the 400 medley relay. The preliminaries and finals will be held for the remaining 14 events today and tomorrow. After the first day of swimming, Princeton leads the meet with a score of 256 points, while defending champion Brown holds second place with 214 points. The Quakers slept soundly last night with the knowledge that they had tallied 61 points yesterday, a score good enough to keep them ahead of the Big Red and the Big Green -- the two Ivy teams they beat this season -- and in sixth place. Cornell trails Penn by a scant five points, while Dartmouth is mired in last with 46. Harvard, Yale and Columbia round out the field, occupying the third, fourth and fifth spots, respectively. Penn, which finished dead last at the 1999 Ivy championships, received encouraging performances from freshman Jessie Anders in the 50 free prelims and junior captain Cathy Holland in the 200 individual medley bonus consolation heat. Anders' 24.20 sixth-place finish was good enough for a spot in the 50 free finals -- the Quakers' first finals appearance since 1997 in any individual event -- and a new school record. Her time broke the previous 10-year old record of 24.22. Anders finished eighth in the 50 free finals with a time of 24.53, good for 11 points. Holland's 2:07.97 in the 200 IM bonus heat broke the school record of 2:09, set in 1984. Prior to yesterday, it was the Penn women's swimming team's longest-standing record. And even though Holland's phenomenal performance was overshadowed by the other swimmers in the 200 IM -- she finished 17th, garnering no points -- Schnur is thrilled with the team's performance. "It's great. It's the best first day [of the Ivy championships] we've ever had," Schnur said. "We have a lot more points than we had at this point last year, or any years, even the last five or six. If [Anders] wasn't in finals, we wouldn't be in sixth place." By far the most eye-popping performance of the day came from Columbia senior and probable 2000 U.S. Olympian Christina Teuscher, who swam the 200 IM in an unbelievable 1:58.87 -- a time which gave her the victory over Brown senior Stephanie Hughes by a little over three seconds. Teuscher, whom Schnur once referred to as the "Michael Jordan of the Ivy League," missed breaking the Ivy Championships 200 IM record -- which she set last year -- by a little over a second. Columbia's lack of depth beyond Teuscher -- the Lions had only four other swimmers win points in individual events -- continues to keep Columbia from the upper echelons of the tournament. The Lions are only 45 points ahead of the Quakers. But it would take a near-miracle for Penn to overtake Columbia, considering the 189-109 shellacking the Quakers took at the hands of the Lions December 10 -- not to mention the fact that Columbia has Teuscher, giving it a near-automatic first-place finish each time she swims. Thus, being able to look down at Cornell or Dartmouth -- or both -- come tomorrow night would seem to be a more realistic goal. But Penn was beaten soundly on the diving board yesterday and must overcome those points lost to have any chance of not finishing last. Penn does have in its favor its swimming strength, and with no diving events scheduled for today, the Quakers hope to open up some distance between them and their pursuers. Schnur thinks that Holland and freshman Margaret Jones will score points today in the 400 IM, and he hopes the same of sophomore Devin McGlynn and freshman Katy Sanderson in the 200 IM. Schnur is also heartened by the fact that the Quakers are in sixth place without yet putting in the pool one of their best young swimmers, freshman Kate Patrizzi, who will swim today in the 100 butterfly and the 100 breaststroke. "We've finished last eight years in a row, and to get out of that basement would be great," Schnur said.
(02/21/00 10:00am)
The Quakers defeated Princeton in the finals of the Howe Cup yesterday. The 24-year wait was long, but to the members of the Penn women's squash team, it was well worth it. The Quakers captured their first-ever national championship yesterday, defeating Princeton in the finals of the Howe Cup in New Haven, Conn. With a 5-4 victory over the second-seeded Tigers at the national team championship finals at Yale yesterday, the top-ranked Quakers returned to Philadelphia last night undefeated, with a trophy in hand -- at the top of their sport. Penn, which before this season had never beaten Harvard or Princeton in 24 years of trying, rode to glory on the heels of eight regular season victories and three Howe Cup wins -- including yesterday's triumph over the defending national champion Tigers -- with not a single loss to blemish its final record. "I feel like I want to go shout it out to the world," Penn senior Paige Kollock said. "I'm proud to be a part of this team." "Everybody piled on the court, and I think we did a little bit of a team cheer," Penn coach Demer Holleran said of the Quakers' celebration. "We always say, 'Who's the best?' and feeling strong about ourselves, we say 'We're the best!' And, of course, when we said that after the victory, 'Who's the best?', we had quite a resounding 'We're the best!'" Kollock only knew who the best actually was after her match -- the final one of the day and the final one of her Penn career -- had concluded. As she was battling Princeton's Courtenay Green, Penn junior Helen Bamber was easily putting away her opponent for the Quakers' fifth and national championship-clinching win. At that point, with the score 5-3 in favor of Penn, the outcome of Kollock's match had no bearing on which team would win the title. But she did not know that. "I heard from the other court that it was 8-4, match ball," Kollock said, referring to Bamber's match. "But I didn't know if it was [Penn] match ball or [Princeton] match ball, and then I played about two points and I heard a loud cheering. I knew that that was the deciding match, but I didn't know if we had won or if they had won?. It was a little nerve-racking." Kollock lost her tightly contested match 3-2, but she was relieved to learn that it was in fact Penn that had ascended to the championship. This Penn ascension was helped tremendously by Katie Patrick's performance in Penn's 5-4 victory over Harvard in the semifinals on Saturday afternoon. Penn's second victory of the season over Harvard was tougher than its previous 6-3 win against the Crimson. "It's sometimes hard to come back and regain the intensity and the desire that it takes to beat any team a second time," Holleran said. "We were a little bit flat going into that match. We weren't quite as sharp and quite as focused." While the Quakers captured all the matches in the second spot through the fifth, Harvard won the matches from the sixth spot to the ninth. With Penn and Harvard tied at 4-4, Patrick, playing at No. 1, trailed Harvard sophomore Margaret Elias 2-1. But Patrick rallied to capture the next two games and the match, winning the team match for the Quakers. "I'll never count Katie out because she's had some amazing wins for us, but at the same time Katie was a little bit flat," Holleran said. "She knew that the team victory was riding on her at that point. She started moving a little bit better, started to be a little bit quicker." While Patrick was given the Howe Cup's Margaret Richey Award for her displays of skill and sportsmanship, she faced a formidable challenge Friday afternoon in Cornell's Olga Puigdemont-Sola, to whom she had lost to twice earlier in the season. Puigdemont-Sola beat Patrick again, but Penn dominated the Big Red, 8-1. Penn moved on to the title, and now the Red and Blue can sit content in the knowledge that they are the best. Or they can party. "We're ready to celebrate," Kollock said. "We've been waiting to celebrate for a long time now. So we're going to do that tonight. And probably the rest of the week."
(02/18/00 10:00am)
The regular season national champion Quakers play in the Howe Cup for the team title at Yale. On Sunday, the Penn women's squash team ended its regular season on top of the nation. Today, the Quakers open up the postseason, and they'll have to start all over again to stay at the top. The Ivy League champions are at Yale today to compete in the three-day Howe Cup national team championships. The winner of the Cup will be crowned the national champion of collegiate women's squash. Penn, through the benefit of finishing the regular season as the top-ranked team in the country, possesses the first seed in the eight-team tournament and will face eighth-seeded Cornell in the quarterfinals this afternoon at 3 p.m. In their regular season opener on November 20, the Quakers -- en route to a perfect Ivy season of six wins and no losses -- easily defeated the Big Red by a score of 7-2. For a variety of reasons, the Quakers are confident that they can do it again. "I don't actually feel that it's dangerous to look past [Cornell] because they're actually weaker than when we beat them before," Penn coach Demer Holleran said, referring to "two or three" Cornell players who are spending the semester studying abroad. "In beating them 7-2, that was on their narrow courts, which are very different from the standard ones we're playing on here, so I feel pretty confident going into that," Holleran added. Penn will sit junior Lauren Patrizio today to rest her knee for this weekend's tougher matches. Patrizio suffered a knee injury in the first half of the season and, according to Holleran, has had tendinitis in it. Patrizio said she feels soreness in her knee after matches. She hopes to be back in the No. 5 spot and in top playing condition tomorrow. Senior Katie Patrick, who finished 8-3 while playing all season at the No. 1 position for the Quakers, will clash with Cornell's Olga Puidgemont-Solaat. Patrick lost a pair of close matches to Puidgemont-Solaat earlier this season -- one during the victory over the Big Red and one at the Constable Invitational individual competition at Princeton in late January -- but hopes that the third time is charm. Because of Cornell's narrow squash courts and the individualized nature of the Constable Invitational, Holleran feels that Patrick's losses were not significant. But Patrick's teammate, senior Paige Kollock, feels that Puidgemont-Solaat already has an edge today. "It's a lot easier to beat someone you've already beaten," Penn senior Paige Kollock said. "Olga, the Cornell girl, has an advantage coming in. However, Katie's a great competitor, and she often rises to the occasion." Last weekend, the Quakers rose to the occasion and completed their first-ever Ivy League championship season -- after a 24-year drought -- with a road sweep of Harvard and Dartmouth. Those same two squads -- ranked fourth and fifth, respectively -- will face off today. Should Penn defeat Cornell today, it will face off against the Harvard-Dartmouth winner tomorrow at 2:30 p.m. Second-seeded Princeton, along with Brown, Trinity and host school Yale, round out the field of teams competing this weekend. Trinity will battle Yale today, while the seventh-seeded Bears will try to upset the Tigers. The Quakers -- who defeated Princeton for the first time ever by a score of 5-4 on January 26 -- see the Tigers as their stiffest competition. The Quakers' margin of victory over the Tigers was its slimmest in its perfect 8-0 season. Should Penn advance, it feels that Princeton is the team that will most likely be waiting for it in Sunday's championship match. Last year, Princeton won the 1998-99 national championship by beating Harvard in the Howe Cup finals. But during the regular season, Harvard had beaten Princeton. The Quakers hope that history will not repeat itself. "[Princeton] lost to us in the regular season this year and probably are looking to beat us," Holleran said. Penn is nevertheless confident in its ability to control its own destiny. "Our own play is a huge determinant of how well we'll do in [the Princeton] match," Holleran said. "If we can play at our best standard, I think we'll be able to beat them, but if there are one or two people in our lineup who don't produce their best squash, we're really at risk of losing that match." While their optimism is guarded, the Quakers are enjoying the fact that they are three wins away from a national title. "I think there's a lot of pride and, at the same time, a sense that we haven't fully accomplished our mission," Holleran said. "We are definitely excited. We're reveling in our glory, but at the same time Demer has reminded us that's it not over yet? We'll be celebrating. I will be, anyway." Kollock said, laughing.
(02/15/00 10:00am)
SHOWDOWNSHOWDOWNNo love lost in clash of Ivy titans SHOWDOWNNo love lost in clash of Ivy titansThe Quakers and Tigers meet for the 201st time tonight at Jadwin Gym. While the love may have flowed freely yesterday, the spirit of old St. Valentine doesn't figure to be in the hearts of the Quakers or their fans tonight. In the most anticipated matchup of the Ivy League hoops season, the Penn men's basketball team (13-7, 6-0 Ivy League) will travel to New Jersey to take on archrival Princeton (13-8, 5-1) at 7:30 p.m. Nearly a year removed from cutting down the nets at Princeton's Jadwin Gymnasium after clinching the 1999 Ivy League championship with a 73-48 shellacking of the Tigers, the Quakers once again find themselves at Old Nassau. And once again, they are alone on top of the Ivies -- thanks to both Yale's February 5 upset of Princeton and Penn's penchant for pummeling weaker conference foes. Penn and second-place Princeton -- who have combined to win titles in all but five of the 43 seasons since formal Ivy competition began in 1957 -- are both fresh off weekend demolitions of Harvard and Dartmouth. But while the Quakers are on a roll coming into tonight's matchup, the Tigers appear to be vulnerable. The loss to Yale aside, Princeton has been besieged by injuries, as forward Mason Rocca and high-scoring freshman guard Spencer Gloger have both missed time due to various ills. Both played this weekend, and both are expected to play tonight. "[Princeton's] guys are hurting. I'm sure they'll play," said Penn senior guard Michael Jordan, who was named Ivy League Player of the Week yesterday. "In this game, especially." Despite Princeton's troubles in the standings and on the trainer's table, the Tigers will not be tamed easily. "Princeton's a special game for us, no matter what the record is," Penn coach Fran Dunphy said. One thing that the Quakers hope will happen is an improvement in their perimeter defense. In the second half of their victory over Dartmouth Saturday night, Penn gave up seven three-pointers. Against a Princeton team skilled at shooting from behind the arc, such a defensive lapse could mean trouble for the Quakers. "Defensively, we got lazy. We gave up a lot of open looks," Jordan said. "I don't think that will be a problem. We know what they do, and we'll be ready for whatever they can throw at us. The games before Dartmouth, we were playing fine defensively." The Quakers will have to play defense more like they did when they faced Harvard. In defeating the Crimson last Friday, Penn held Harvard star Dan Clemente to a paltry two points. Not unlike Princeton's big men, Clemente is a capable shooter from long range. "When we play Princeton, it's always the same," Dunphy said. "We have to make sure that we guard their three-point shooters. They do a great job from the perimeter. Their job is to step out and make shots, so we're going to try and press out on those three-point shooters and hopefully not give up too much inside." Despite their lack of vigilance defending the three-pointer Saturday night, the Quakers, for the most part, have been overpowering defensively against their Ivy opponents. As such, Dunphy foresees no change in the Quakers' familiar man-to-man scheme tonight, although he said that he might "throw some other wrinkles in there." Dunphy believes that Princeton will most likely use a switching man-to-man defense that "looks zonish." "They would do a great job on defense whether they play man or match-up zone," he said. The Quakers will have to contend with a variety of dangers clad in orange and black. Geoff Owens will be given the task of guarding multi-talented sophomore center Chris Young, who torched Harvard for 30 points on 10-of-11 shooting Saturday night, including four three-pointers. Young is not the only worry for the Quakers tonight. Rocca and Gloger will both be something of X-factors given their respective returns from injuries and their potential to explode at a moment's notice. "If you were [at the Palestra] for last year's game, in the second half of that game, Mason Rocca would absolutely petrify you," Dunphy said, referring to Princeton's improbable comeback win last year. "It was probably one of the finest halves of basketball I've ever seen. He got every rebound, every loose ball, stuck shots back in, got himself to the foul line, made a perimeter shot. He's a heart-and-soul kind of guy. "Spencer Gloger made 10 threes against UAB. Chris Young went for 30 points against Harvard the other night, so again, I could go on and on. Their [entire] team concerns us, and hopefully, if indeed somebody gets on a roll, that we can limit how badly they hurt us." Another weapon that Princeton has is its hostile student section, the self-proclaimed "Jadwin Jungle." It is unlikely that the Princeton crowd has forgotten how the Quakers faithful in attendance last year rushed Jadwin's floor after Penn clinched the Ivy championship. It is more likely, however, that the Princeton supporters will double as Penn detractors and serenade the Quakers and their fans with their usual chants of "Safety School" and "S-A-Ts." "I'm sure their fans will be wild and crazy and shouting out everything they possibly can to try to get under our skin," Jordan said. "I'm sure they were pissed about last year. I know when we were cutting down the nets, somebody threw something at my head. I didn't quite see it, but they said a bottle went flying past my head. I'm sure they'll be a little upset." The passionate hatred that the two teams' fans feel for each other is but one aspect of a titillating rivalry that both schools seem to relish. The players, however, see Penn-Princeton as just another Ivy game, albeit an important one. "I think that the rivalry is more of a student thing and an alumni thing than it is a basketball player thing," Langel said. "For the basketball players, each Ivy League game is important because there's no conference tournament, so you can't slip up. For the people outside of the two teams, this seems to be a huge game, so we go out there and play hard, just the same way we play hard for every game." Langel's roommate and fellow co-captain also feels the intensity of the rivalry, just for the simple fact that he is playing and there is an opponent on the other side of the ball. "I hate my opponent, whoever it is," Jordan added. "But after the game, it's a different story. On the court, I'm a different person than I am off the court. I don't hate anybody on [Princeton's] team, but while we're playing, I hate everybody on their team."
(02/10/00 10:00am)
Penn swimming interim coach Mike Schnur may have a winning formula. In the last 15 years, Mike Schnur has seen just about every color in the spectrum of the Penn swimming and diving program. There is something that keeps him in Red and Blue. Before rising to the position of interim head coach of the swimming team in the wake of longtime coach Kathy Lawlor-Gilbert's surprising retirement last September, Schnur swam for the Quakers as an undergraduate beginning in 1984. After graduating in 1988, he came back into the fold in 1992 as an assistant coach at the behest of Lawlor-Gilbert. To Schnur, there is a simple reason why all roads lead to West Philadelphia. "[It's] loyalty to the school," he said. "Because I came here as a swimmer, when I knew I wanted to go into coaching. I knew this was the only place I really wanted to go. "The opportunity to come into coaching with my old coach [Lawlor-Gilbert] was something I couldn't turn down. It was an easy decision to come back and start coaching when she asked me." Under Schnur's tutelage, both the men's and women's teams have experienced something of a renaissance this year at Sheerr Pool. While the men's team has beaten some of its closest rivals and gone undefeated at home, the women's team ended its notorious 42-meet, seven-year Ivy League losing streak in Schnur's very first meet as head coach in November. And while the team's initial results under Schnur have differed from those in past years, he maintains that there is not much of a difference between him and Lawlor-Gilbert. "I learned a lot of my coaching from her," he said. "She taught me everything I knew for a few years. I think there a lot of similarities between the two of us. Sometimes when you hear it from a different person, it gets reinforced a little more. I think I'm telling the team a lot of the same things she did. Maybe they're listening a little more now." To his swimmers, however, it is clear that Schnur is different. "With Mike, he's both approachable off of the pool and also in the pool, and he's also been exposed to a lot of the new changes [in swimming] that have been going on within the last 10 or 12 years," said senior Jon Maslow, who deeply respects Lawlor-Gilbert, his coach of three years. "He's been out of [competitive swimming] for less of a time. I think he knows what's going on more at this point in time than coach [Lawlor-Gilbert] did." However, Maslow acknowledges that Schnur's relatively recent move from the pool to the sidelines is a mixed blessing. "It's sometimes hard because the line between fooling around with a friend and listening to your coach sometimes gets blurred there," he said. "I don't consider him that much older than us. Swimming under coach [Lawlor-Gilbert], it was somebody who was more of an adult figure. Personally, I find it a lot easier just to listen and to be coached by somebody who is closer to being one of my peers." "I guess it's almost hard to separate Mike as a person from Mike as a coach, because that's kind of the role that he has for me," junior Cathy Holland added. "But I kind of see him as the same person. Mike as a person outside the pool is the same person as Mike as a coach." But while Schnur is by no means an ogre on the pool deck, his swimmers know he is not exactly the tooth fairy, either. "Mike is definitely not overbearing unless you cross him," Maslow said. "Mike has a great deal of tolerance for everybody on the team and he lets the swimmers have a lot of latitude -- what they feel is right for them swimming-wise. But if he says we need to get something done, people basically listen. He commands a great deal of respect in that fashion." According to Schnur's former teammate Brad McNamee, Schnur had what it took to be what he is today as an undergrad. Always lurking was the kind of coach Maslow and Holland describe as both a coach and a friend. "He was really friendly, a really good team player," McNamee said. "He was always one of the better swimmers on the team, good at bringing everybody together and motivating people. "He was pretty laid back. He was generally pretty open with people, pretty friendly, nice, not really a prankster but kind of joked around with people. From what I remember and from his behavior at the time, I would think he'd be a pretty good, nurturing coach." "I did schoolwork," Schnur said of his undergrad days, laughing. "I had a lot of fun. Our team was very close when I was here, and we had what we would consider a vibrant social life. All the guys on our team lived together, and we had a lot of fun. It was a great experience swimming here. "I try to pass that on a little bit as coach. I want the men now to have as much fun as I did with our men's team. If they get as much out of it as I did, then they'll be better off the rest of their lives." With age, however, comes change. And Schnur acknowledges a difference between what he did with his free time in his youth and what he does with it now. "I call recruits," he said. "We get home from practice, seven o'clock at night, I eat and I call recruits for a couple hours, and that's basically what we do all winter long. That's pretty much the daily routine, but I like it. It's something that I enjoy very much." Despite Schnur's successes with the team, he might not be there in September when his recruits show up for freshmen orientation. The "interim" moniker bestowed upon him at the beginning of the season has not yet been replaced with a more permanent title. According to Penn Athletic Director Steve Bilsky, the search for a new head coach has just begun and will intensify once the swimming season is done at the end of February. A few resumes have already been received. Bilsky added that Schnur is free to apply for the job at the end of the season and that he would be given "serious consideration." The new head coach will most likely be named in late spring. "[Schnur's] a hard working guy," Bilsky said. "I think he's very committed to the sport of swimming, and I think he's very committed to coaching. I'm not surprised that the team has responded to him." "There's nobody that I would rather see as head coach of the women's team next year," Holland said. "He's a great person and a great coach, and he's done so much for our team." Schnur, however, is content with letting the chips fall where they may. "[Penn will] take care of it when the time comes," he said. "I have 100 percent faith in our Athletic Department. I think that the job that I've done and that our assistant coaches and the team's done this year has been pretty good, and hopefully that will speak for itself."
(02/07/00 10:00am)
In Saturday's very first event, the 200-yard medley relay, a mere hundredth of a second was the margin of defeat for the Penn women's swimming team (6-6). In its regular season finale against visiting Bucknell, however, this was just one more chance for a comeback by a comeback team in a comeback year. But unlike the massive come-from-behind drives that led to victory at Dartmouth last weekend and fell short at Navy two weeks ago, the Quakers wasted no time in overtaking the Bison en route to a 170-112 victory. "I knew we'd come back," Penn coach Mike Schnur said. "The one thing that marks this team all year is their ability to come back. They haven't panicked all year when they lose in the early events. We came right back and Cathy [Holland] won the 1000 [freestyle] and then Devin [McGlynn] won the 200 [free] and that eliminated any of the momentum Bucknell had built up. We ended that momentum real fast." This is not to say that the Quakers feasted on tasty Bison meat for the rest of the meet. While Penn never again trailed after winning those early events, maintaining its lead required constant vigilance, as a scrappy but relatively shallow Bucknell hung tough with the Red and Blue until the very late stages of the meet. "We had to keep winning," Schnur said. "The whole meet was within 15 points the entire time, up until the 500 [free], 100 fly when we started to take charge. Our good training took over in the end. Last three, four events, we started taking charge in the end. But it felt great to not be losing. It was nice to be winning during the meet." Bucknell, led by coach Jerry Foley, had other things on its mind, as the Bison are preparing for next week's Patriot League championships. "Today was not a big emotional up for us," Foley said. "Emotionally, we're kind of keeping it all in for a week and a half from now." With the win, Penn finishes at .500 on the year, a giant leap for a program once notorious for its paucity of success. "It feels great," Schnur said. "We earned [the win] today. We beat a good team. Bucknell is pretty close to as good as we've beaten all year." Like many other coaches whose teams swam against Penn this year, Foley can see the improvement. "This year's [Penn] team by far is the best team I've seen in five or six years," said Foley, who faced the Quakers annually as an assistant coach at Army before taking the top spot with the Bison. "They swim as a team. They have great individuals, but they're really swimming well as a team. Kudos to the coaching staff." With the regular season behind them, the Quakers can now prepare for the Easterns -- the de facto Ivy championships -- three weeks hence. "I see a couple women who are really tired, who need to start resting," Schnur said. "But I also see some people who are setting up to swim fast. Devin McGlynn had her best meet of the season. Cathy Holland swam a lot better than she did last weekend. Katy Sanderson had a great 500 free, Kate Patrizzi had a great day, much better than last weekend. "We train a little bit more, then we start resting. We start working on our relay starts, working on getting their bodies recovered from all the hard work, we start to swim fast and start focusing on a more individual-based meet."
(02/04/00 10:00am)
In the final meet for eight Quakers, Penn looks to crack the .500 mark. Mediocrity, for many teams, is a four-letter word. But the way things have gone for the Penn women's swimming team over the past ten years, finishing up with the same amount of wins as losses would be a welcome change. The Quakers (5-6) have a chance to do just that when they swim against Bucknell tomorrow at noon at Sheerr Pool in their final regular season meet. "To finish .500 after winning almost no meets in the last few years would be great," Penn coach Mike Schnur said. "It would be a real step in the right direction. It would show how hard these women have worked." For eight swimmers, this will be the final meet of the season, as Penn is only allowed to send a squad of 18 women to the Ivy Championships at Harvard later this month. Katie Kowalski, Michelle Wild, Mary Reilly, Marisa Crowell, Kate Peretti and Mary Schoenhaus are among those who did not obtain one of those 18 ultra-competitive spots. For seniors Jamie Taylor and Colleen Flood -- who were also not selected to the Ivy Championships squad -- this will be the last meet of their Penn careers. "I'm sure in a lot of ways those girls are at least somewhat disappointed [about not being selected to the squad]," Penn junior captain Cathy Holland said. With a successful finale against the Bison in mind, these eight have tempered training with rest. "They're resting this week, and they're shaving, and we're very hopeful they'll swim fast," Schnur said. "A lot of those women, even though they're not going to Ivy Championships, are very good swimmers and have worked very hard this year. And I really want to see it pay off with some fast swims [tomorrow]." However, those 18 who have been tapped to travel to Cambridge are training hard with the Ivies in mind, which means that a majority of the Quakers will be tired come noon tomorrow. "I know the girls are really tired, especially from the long bus trip we took this weekend," Holland said, referring to the road trip the Quakers took to Dartmouth and Brown. "That was pretty hard on us." Bucknell, one of the top teams in the Patriot League, will not be sympathetic. Schnur termed the Bison -- led by sophomore Abby Weaver, the ECAC Swimmer of the Week two weeks ago -- as "probably" better than Dartmouth. The Quakers barely defeated the Big Green last Saturday -- after being down nearly 45 points early in the meet -- for their second and final Ivy win of the season. "There's really no way to sneak around Bucknell," Schnur said. "You gotta take their strengths and our strengths and battle in the pool." He added that Bucknell's strengths are in its sprinters and backstrokers, but noted that Penn, which is going with its strongest lineup tomorrow, has more depth than the Bison. "Our top-10 women and their top-10 women are pretty darn similar," Schnur said. "The next 15 people on each team, ours are considerably faster, and that's where we're going to have to win the meet. "If we swim the way we did against Cornell or Army or Drexel or some of those teams, we will definitely win. If we're as tough as we were at the end of the Dartmouth meet, we'll win. If we swim the way we did against Columbia or Brown or some of our not-as-good meets, we're in a lot of trouble." Whatever happens tomorrow, Schnur maintains that the Quakers' ultimate focus is the Ivy Championships and not this weekend's collision with the Bison.
(02/03/00 10:00am)
Diving is a strange mix of fear, love, pain and courage. Four Penn divers are taking the plunge this season. Kathie Dykes doesn't want to get out of the pool. She's not a rude person, nor is she shy. On the contrary, she seems extremely confident -- as confident as she needs to be to do what she does. The sopping wet sophomore begrudgingly agrees to be interviewed. She smiles, but her eyes betray her. She regrets every minute spent away from the pool, away from her sport. Kathie Dykes is a diver. · When most think of diving, images of summer come to mind -- images of jumping higher and higher on a springboard before submerging oneself in the dark blue of the deep end; of drenching unlucky onlookers with a well-timed cannonball; or of the gleeful red sting of a bellyflop. The world of competitive diving, however, is a largely unheralded one, given perhaps a brief thought once every four years when the Summer Olympics captures the imagination of the world. Competitive diving, especially at the college level, is a completely different animal from the diving done in backyards across America. When one dives for sport instead of for kicks, bellyflops are born of error -- not of summertime fun -- and those red stings are never, ever gleeful. Pain is as much a part of the sport as jumping or flipping or turning. And divers know it. "For the divers, it's all about forgetting about the fact that you might hit your head on the board or you might break your hand or your toe or your whole leg, or the fact that you might smack on the water, and it's going to absolutely kill," Penn senior diver Mike Previti said. "It's about forgetting about that and just focusing on what you personally think you can do before you hit the water." "If something gets weird on the diving board, it usually results in injuring yourself or smacking on the water," Penn diver Matt Cornell added. "I tend to block those out in my memory." The solidly built Previti, who began diving for the Quakers last year after spending eight years as a gymnast, is familiar with the possibility of pain and the fear that walks hand-in-hand with it. "We definitely crash a lot. I probably crash more than most," Previti said, laughing. "I did a back one-and-a-half one time, I was coming down right on top of the board, and I caught it with my hands and pushed myself off. Scared the shit out of myself. I don't think I've ever heard my heart beat that fast before." Cornell knows, perhaps better than any Quakers diver, what can happen when things go wrong off the board. The sophomore broke his hand performing a dive in practice last semester. "Since I hit my hand on a reverse one-and-a-half, I've been a little tentative about doing any types of reverses," said Cornell, who nonetheless performed the weekend after his injury. "It's one of the things that comes with diving. It's the first really hard hit I've had on the board before, and it's something you gotta get over. "Being scared is one of the things that makes diving great. You have that fear, and you just have to overcome it and do the dive anyway." Perhaps this is best summed up by what goes through Kathie Dykes' mind before a dive. "Don't die," she said. The problem of pain is exacerbated by the way the Quakers train. While some schools use a "dry board" system in which divers learn new dives by experimenting with them in harnesses attached to ropes and pulleys, the small swimming facilities at the continually renovated Gimbel Gym puts this expensive training device out of reach for the Quakers. The Penn divers must instead learn their dives on the real thing -- meaning they are much more likely to get hurt. In fact, for Penn divers, almost all training is done into the water. "Pretty much all our training is done on the board," Previti said. "The only thing that's important is that your legs be strong enough, to get you up in the air pretty high. No one really lifts. Some of us lift anyway -- I personally lift, but not so much for the team, just to look good at the beach." Even to those who have just watched diving on television, it is clear that the sport is extraordinary -- and that those who participate in it are a unique bunch. "I've known a lot of divers now in my life, and they're definitely different types of people from swimmers," Penn swimming coach Mike Schnur said. Schnur, who has been around the Penn swimming and diving program for several years as a swimmer in the late 1980s and as an assistant coach for most of the 1990s, acknowledges the intestinal fortitude that divers must possess. "The divers have, in a lot of ways, a lot more guts than swimmers do, a lot more guts than most athletes because half their practice they spend crashing, you know, landing on their heads, and landing on their backs, and in pain, and they get right back up and do it," Schnur said. "Most of them have no fear at all." The Penn divers concur. "[We are] probably a little more adventure-seeking than the swimmers," Previti said. "Divers have to be a little more, you know, 'What if I could throw one more flip in there? I wonder if I could put one more twist in there before I smack my head on the water.'" The soft-spoken but fiery Cornell, who hails from York, Pa., put it more bluntly. "You gotta have the balls to do hard dives," he said. "That's what it comes down to. When it comes to swimming, you gotta be muscular, you gotta have good lungs and all that more athletic stuff. But diving is more about concentration, like psyching yourself up to do a dive and just having the balls to try something hard." · As a group, the Penn divers are neither exclusively born nor exclusively made. While Cornell and Dykes were taught the art of projecting themselves into water at a young age, Previti and Penn freshman Sue Breslin learned the ropes as college students. "I came here [to Gimbel] to work out in the weightroom, and they kicked me out because I had on khakis," said Previti, who began diving last year. "So then I went to go swimming, and I was swimming in my boxer shorts. And the diving coach tapped me on the head and told me I had to get out of the pool because they had practice and I told him I wanted to try out for the team." Both Previti and Breslin seem to have a steep learning curve. Breslin -- who dove in a summer league during junior high school -- has noticeably improved from meet to meet this season, despite the fact that she cannot devote all of her practice time to diving. Breslin was recruited as a swimmer, but she volunteered to dive when Dykes decided to take the fall off to concentrate on her studies -- a great help to a team that consistently lost points at meets last season for not having any divers at all. "It definitely hasn't helped her swimming at all," Schnur said of Breslin's double duty in the pool and on the board. "She's balancing two sports, two demanding time sports and really can't focus 100 percent on either of them. But she's improved a lot as a diver this year." The magnitude of Breslin's feats is not lost on her fellow divers. "Sue is amazing," Previti said. "It's unreal enthusiasm, it's just like 'Oh, let's do this, and I want to do this!' And I'll do a dive, and she's like, 'I want to learn that!'" One might think that Breslin, as both a swimmer and a diver, serves as a liaison of sorts between the two squads. But the relationship between the teams is already very strong. "We take bus trips together. We eat together when we go away on road trips," Penn swimmer Cathy Holland said. "[The swimmers are] definitely friends with the divers." "You don't want to have a situation where you have the swimming team separate from the diving team," Schnur said. "You want them all as one team. When you have that, you have a program that's really doing well. "When we have diving recruits come in this year, they've stayed with the swimmers. They inherit the idea that they're part of the whole team, not just the small diving team." · Love hurts. Divers know that slaps, smacks and cracks are part of the sport -- when one does not properly respect the water, it can be as hard and as unforgiving as concrete. So why do divers dive? It's very simple -- they love to do it. "If you're in day in and day out, if you're in the pool and you're not enjoying yourself, there's no point in coming," Penn diving coach Daphne Hernandez said. The passion divers have for their sport encompasses many things -- camaraderie, laughs, adrenaline, glory and the sheer thrill of flying through the air with the greatest of ease. For one thing, the lighter moments that inevitably present themselves to a group as tight as the Penn divers enrich the diving experience. Of the Fab Four -- Dykes, Breslin, Previti and Cornell -- Previti had no trouble identifying who the class clown is. "Kathie is a nut," he said. "She's just a spaz. She makes practice really fun. She always does the weirdest things, and it always gets a smile out of me. "We have a mobile jacuzzi, it's like a little hot tub so that we don't get cold. She's always running around in circles trying to make whirlpools." As a grin lit up her face, Dykes gave a rebuttal to her male counterpart's partial disclosure. "Did Previti tell you this? Oh, dude," she said, laughing. "That was Previti and me last year. We decided to see if we could start a whirlpool in the hot tub at the end of practice. "Diving, you get to goof off a lot more, because there's down time in between the boards [dives]. You can either stretch, or whatever. You can crack jokes, tell stories, do stupid things -- like running around in the hot tub." There is definitely something more to diving than just fun and games, something in the pastime that calls to its converts. Perhaps it is the innate human desire to escape the bonds of Earth and its garish gravity that causes divers to leap. Or perhaps they really like to splash a lot. Or perhaps it is a love of pushing themselves to the breaking point, of adding that one flip or turn before water reluctantly gives way to flesh and bone. "For every dive you do, you can do that dive better than you've ever done it before," Cornell said. "And that challenge is what makes it fun for me." · The interview is over. Kathie Dykes has returned to the pool and resumes her diving. The humidity in Sheerr Pool is oppressive as Dykes climbs up the ladder of the three-meter diving board. The board bends at her command, ready to send her into the air, if only for a short second or two. Splash.
(02/01/00 10:00am)
Penn won its second Ivy League meet in nearly 50 tries on Saturday. On November 21, 1992, the Penn women's swimming team upset Cornell in their season opener, 168.5-131.5. Then, the Quakers forgot how to win a league contest, losing their next 42 Ivy meets. On November 20, 1999, Penn beat Cornell 153-145, ending that ignominious seven-year streak. But on Saturday afternoon, the Quakers made sure that embarrassing history did not repeat itself. With a stunning come-from-behind 158-142 victory over Dartmouth in Hanover, N.H., Penn gained its second Ivy win of the season and quelled any belief that the Quakers' win over Cornell was a fluke. The win was anything but easy. Penn trailed early, falling behind by almost 45 points, as Dartmouth's well-rested sprinters took advantage of the fact that the Quakers were somewhat drained from the bus trip to remote Hanover. "We were kind of hoping to go out in the beginning, win a bunch of events, get a lot of points and then kind of go from there," Penn junior captain Cathy Holland said. "That didn't really work out." Like the win over Cornell, Penn's meet with the Big Green came down to the wire. But unlike the win at Ithaca, the Quakers had to come from behind to have a chance at the 'W'. "At Cornell, we were winning right from the beginning," Penn coach Mike Schnur said. "In this meet, we were getting killed early in the meet. We were almost dead and buried. After a little break in the middle of the meet during diving, we regrouped and I reminded the women of why we were there and how hard they've worked." Schnur's talk catalyzed a furious Quakers comeback, similar to the one that brought Penn just short of victory at Navy the previous weekend. Dartmouth won only one event from that point on, and the Quakers consistently claimed valuable points by placing other swimmers highly on a consistent basis. Penn had its share of victors, too. Holland won the 200-yard backstroke and individual medley, while freshman Kate Patrizzi triumphed in the 100 and 200 fly. Kathy Sanderson claimed the 200 and 500 freestyle, and sophomore Devin McGlynn won the 100 free. The training regimen the team followed over winter break appeared to be a key factor in allowing Penn to get back into the meet after falling behind. "When our women got to their second, third and fourth events of the day, the Dartmouth girls were tired," Schnur said. "Every time they had to swim the second, third and fourth times, they were getting slower and slower, and our women were getting better and better." By the time the final event -- the 400 freestyle relay -- rolled around, the Quakers were confident of victory. "I talked to the women at the midpoint of the meet about taking it down to the last relay," Schnur said. "I knew our last relay was better than theirs, because we have more sprint freestylers than they do. They [McGlynn, Sanderson, Jessica Anders and April Fletcher] have a lot of confidence in each other and they know they get the job done. "It was a lot of work to win that meet Saturday," Schnur added. "It was very satisfying, because the Dartmouth women all felt great about themselves early in that meet and they were all happy and they were all cheering. And you could see event by event, they were getting lower and lower and lower." Penn and Dartmouth were not alone on Saturday. Yale swam against both the Quakers and the Big Green and beat them both, trouncing the Red and Blue by a score of 175-114. Penn then traveled to Rhode Island on Sunday to take on Ivy power Brown. The Quakers had many factors working against them in their final Ivy meet of the regular season. "Brown's just much better than we are," Schnur said, noting that the Quakers were emotionally drained from their victory over the Big Green the previous day and physically tired from the long bus ride to Providence. While Brown swam its best lineup, the Quakers put swimmers in unfamiliar events. Despite sophomore Kathie Dykes' second-place finish in both the 1-meter and 3-meter diving events, the Quakers were annihilated, 232-58, to fall to 5-6 overall and 2-5 in the Ivies.
(01/28/00 10:00am)
By the time you read this, the Penn women's swimming team will be on the road to proving itself. The Quakers (4-4, 1-3 Ivy) are scheduled to depart early this morning to make the long bus trip to chilly Hanover, N.H., where they will take on Dartmouth and Yale in a dual meet tomorrow at 2 p.m. at Dartmouth's ancient Karl Michael & Spaulding Pools. Penn has repeatedly pointed to tomorrow's meet with Dartmouth as its most important of the semester, due to the fact that the Big Green is its only remaining realistically beatable Ivy opponent. In their season opener on November 20 in Ithaca, the Quakers edged Cornell 153-145, giving them their first and only Ivy win of the year and ending what had been a dark age for the program -- a seven-year, 42-meet Ivy losing streak. Their last league win, also against Cornell, came in the 1992-93 season opener. But the Quakers don't want to stop at just one Ivy victory. They want No. 2. "It [another Ivy win] would really show the people in our league that we're not a fluke by just winning one meet," Penn coach Mike Schnur said. "This is our A lineup," Schnur added. "No messing around." To this end, Penn has conducted itself in practice this week in a way that it hopes is conducive to being in optimal racing shape tomorrow. "We definitely haven't been working as hard as we were the past couple weeks," junior captain Cathy Holland said, referring to the Quakers' grueling winter-break training regimen. "We've kind of been resting our bodies [and] resting ourselves mentally to get ready for this weekend." Schnur added that Penn worked on starts and turns in practice this week. The Quakers, who had experimented with putting certain swimmers in events unfamiliar to them in recent meets, will be going with what they feel is their strongest lineup. However, some swimmers will swim in unfamiliar events that they have nonetheless performed well in. For instance, Penn senior swimmer Jamie Taylor, who has been a butterflyer and a freestyler in the majority of her Penn career, will swim the 100- and 200-yard backstrokes -- despite the fact that she became a backstroker only a few weeks ago. While only some swimmers will be affected by lineup changes, everyone will have to deal with acclimating themselves to Dartmouth's small and quirky Karl Michael & Spaulding Pools. Among other things, the starting blocks are different than those at Penn's Sheerr Pool, the lights are dim and the hostile fans are loud. "Dartmouth's pool is difficult," Schnur said. "It's a very, very old pool, and it's got some idiosyncrasies that take getting used to? we're going to have to spend some time [tonight] and [tomorrow morning] getting used to that before the meet." However, while most of the Penn swimmers have never swam competitively at Dartmouth's pool, Schnur doesn't foresee those quirks posing a problem, as long as the Quakers take their time getting used to them. "We've swam very well on the road all year, and have figured out ways to get around [the oddities of other pools]," Schnur said. Lost in the fray, at least from the Quakers' point of view is Yale, a team that the Red and Blue have little chance of defeating. With all the focus on Dartmouth, the Elis have become an almost forgotten opponent. The Elis, however, are less of an afterthought than Sunday's opponent -- Brown. Penn will have no time to recover before heading to Providence to battle the Bears, but it isn't a meet the Quakers are concerned with in the least. "I don't think anyone has really thought about Brown at all," Holland said, adding that, similar to several recent meets, many swimmers will swim in unfamiliar events Sunday.
(01/24/00 10:00am)
With its biggest meet of the year on the horizon, the tired Penn women's swimming team visited Navy on Saturday. And while the Quakers' quest for a pre-Dartmouth treat was torpedoed 164-133 by a stronger and deeper Navy squad, Penn (5-5) still has reason to feel good about its performance, which dropped it to .500 on the year. Considering that the Quakers lost to Navy by 74 points last season and fell to the Midshipmen by a whopping 115 points in 1998, this year's mere 31-point separation is really not so bad for the Quakers. "It was nice to compete against a team who's really killed us the last couple years," Penn coach Mike Schnur said. "We haven't even been in the Navy meet [in] probably four or five years. The last two or three years, they've really hammered us, and we've gotten a lot better and a lot closer to them. In fact, I'm pretty confident in saying next year we'll beat them." That might not be so easy, given the high motivation level of the Midshipmen. "The Navy girls were pretty fired up about this meet, too," Penn junior captain Cathy Holland said. "It was their last meet [before the Patriot League championships], it was the senior girls' very last meet, so they definitely didn't want to lose this meet. They did not want to lose to us." Early on, it looked as if Navy would run rampant. The Midshipmen won the first five events, while placing more swimmers in the important second, third and fourth places than the Quakers did. Not until freshman Kate Patrizzi swam an impressive 2:21.03 200-meter butterfly -- a mark that not only approached the Navy pool's record but also beat some of the 200 fly times in the Penn-Navy men's meet Saturday -- in the day's sixth event did the Quakers taste first place. But even then, the Midshipmen racked up points by securing the second, third and fourth places. "She's a big part of the team. She's the best flyer we've had on the team in a long, long time. And she never loses," Schnur said of Patrizzi, who trains with the men's team's flyers. "She gets in there and races and is really becoming possessive with those events, and taking charge of them, and saying before she gets on the blocks, 'None of you can beat me. This is my event. I own it.' It's great to see. I expect big things from her at the Ivy championships, as well as the next three years." Patrizzi's stellar performance seemed to catalyze a furious Quakers comeback in the second half of the meet. Freshman Jessica Anders won the 50 freestyle in the next event, and the Quakers picked up crucial points by capturing second and fourth places. Anders then won the 100 free, while fellow freshman Margaret Jones triumphed in the 200 backstroke. In this stretch, Patrizzi completed a fine meet by winning the 100 fly. At the end of the day, however, the Quakers found that the early hole they had put themselves in was too deep. "They lost the first five events, and a lot of them were heartbreakers. I mean, they were really close," Schnur said. "And they had every reason in the world to quit. Our team had no reason to fight as hard as they did. And yet, they killed themselves to get back in that meet, and it shows a lot of guts on their part. "In years past, that meet would have been a hundred-point blowout. We would have absolutely given up and done nothing at the end of the meet. And this year's team has much more heart than any team I've ever seen. They're really a pleasure to coach because of it. We never gave up, and we didn't lose by much at all." Nothing separates the Quakers from a showdown with Dartmouth now except for five days of practice. And, in those five days, the Quakers hope to do what it takes to let themselves take full advantage of strength gained from their grueling winter break training regimen. To this end, the Quakers will most likely begin to rest later in the week. Schnur also wants to emphasize the "little things" in practice this week that, in his opinion, have been de-emphasized in the hustle and bustle of training. He gave relay starts as one example of a little thing that needs to be worked on. "Right now, we're definitely looking towards this Saturday," Holland said. "This past weekend, it was just another opportunity to get up and race, and we definitely did that. Unfortunately, we didn't win."
