No vacationing in Miami for Penn

Most travel to Florida at any time of the year for long days on the beach and the hopping late night scene -- on its most recent trip to Miami, the Penn men's swimming team enjoyed neither.

Rather, the Quakers' Sunshine State excursion was marked by a week of intense practices in preparation for the second, and most important, half of the Quakers' season.

After sufficient time to train and build team unity, the squad finished off the southern voyage with the capstone Florida Atlantic University Holiday Invitational in Miami.

After six days of training, Penn overcame 50-degree weather and a trio of challenging competitors -- Binghmaton, Bucknell and host FAU -- to capture the tournament with 847 points.

"It was a good meet," Penn freshman Jeff Organisciak said. "The teams we were up against were good teams, and everyone was swimming pretty well.

"Florida Atlantic has a pretty strong team with fast kids, so it's good that we came out on top."

Organisciak finished third in the 500 yard free as Penn swept the event's top three spots. Sophomore Shaun Lehrer posted a time of 4:48.66 to capture first place, while freshman Chris Perez placed second.

Freshman Brian Funk and sophomore Eric Hirschhorn both won their respective events, the 1000 free and the 200 free.

With only three individual top finishes, Penn milked its depth for all it was worth.

Finishing second in their respective events were sophomores Brendan Lang in the 200 fly and Andrew Trout in the 50 free, junior Allan Lam in the 200 backstroke and senior captain Russell Zuckerman -- who captured second in the 100 free style, crossing the line in a time of 48.6 seconds.

Junior Nate Pinney also nabbed fourth in the 1000 yard fly with a time of 54.48.

"Depth was the key," Zuckerman said. "We might not have the fastest swimmers, but we picked up second, third and fourth in a lot of events, and that gave us the win."

Aside from potent competition, an added difficulty was the unseasonably cold temperature.

"It was freezing," Zuckerman said. "It was an impossible environment, everything we did was guts."

Confident after seeing the Quakers formidability in a challenging situation, the senior captain asserted Penn's preeminence.

"We would have won in any environment, but no one swam fast," he said.

Beyond picking up a momentum building victory at the FAU Holiday Invitational, the Penn swimmers also felt that winter training session was a week well spent.

"[There was] no relaxing, only recovering from practice," Zuckerman said. "But it was much better in Florida than at home. It helps to concentrate without school, to be isolated with the team and to have [the FAU Invitational] as the only objective for the week."

Finishing behind the Red and Blue were host Florida Atlantic with 774.5 points, Bucknell with 529 and Binghamton with 205.5.

Penn hopes to put all of its winter break training to use when it returns to regular competition on Saturday at 3:30 p.m. against Army at Sheerr Pool.

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