Search Results

Below are your search results. You can also try a Basic Search.

Swimming: On Senior Night, reality check from Middies

(01/26/07 10:00am)

The floor around Sheerr Pool is already wet from splashed pool water. On Saturday it might get a little wetter when emotions run high during the Penn swim teams' final home meets of the year against Navy. For the six seniors on the men's team (6-6, 1-6 Eastern Intercollegiate Swimming League) and the nine on the women's (10-4, 4-3 Ivy), tears might be shed, especially before the meets begin. "I honor all the seniors in a little announcement before the final home meet," coach Mike Schnur said. "I talk about each one of them to the crowd." So how will the seniors react to this ceremony, which started when Schnur took over in 1999? For men's senior captain Brandon Thompson, "It will be bittersweet because I'm ready to move on, but at the same time I've had a great time while I've been here." Women's senior co-captain Alison Bretherick says thinking about the meet "is surreal. I don't feel like a senior and I certainly don't feel like my swimming career is almost over." For Bretherick's classmate and co-captain, Stephanie Colson, "knowing that this is the last time that I will ever have a meet in Sheerr Pool will make me swim all out on everything I do." "For the men it's just their last home game, but they're not quite that emotional about it," Schnur said. "My senior women's class is a very special group, and also a very emotional group. It's going to be a real challenge for them to get over the emotion of our last home meet and get ready to perform, because if we don't perform well we can't win." And unlike in past years, the last home meet will be against a formidable opponent. The Midshipmen bring a strong men's team (11-3, 3-3 EISL) to town, although the three losses have come in their last three meets (at Harvard, vs. Cornell and at Yale). The women's team (11-1, 6-0 Patriot), "is the best women's team Navy has ever had," Schnur said. "They have a freshmen class that is absolutely great, and every bit as good as ours." Navy had better hope so, as its women's team has lost six in a row to the Quakers, and every time in Philadelphia since the 1998-99 season. The Navy swim teams benefit from nature of the school. "Navy is by far and away the best of the academies [at swimming]," Schnur said. "Any swimmer with a slight military inclination's first choice is Navy. They have a great tradition and it makes sense that they'd have a great swimming team." Another factor in the women's meet is the different conferences of the teams. Although Navy's men's team is in Penn's conference, the two women's teams are in different ones. The women must maintain their normal intensity that they exhibit during Ivy League meets, Schnur said. But for Schnur's seniors at least, that may prove difficult.

https://www.thedp.com/article/2007/01/swimming_on_senior_night_reality_check_from_middies

PennConnects