Freshman Speed Demons

Katie Frazee and Katie Stores arrived in Philadelphia with different swimming backgrounds, experiences and expectations for their Penn careers.

While one has largely honed her record breaking abilities in Scheerr Pool, the other arrived as a nationally sought-after recruit. One from Arizona, the other from New Jersey. One swims on her back, the other on her front. The list goes on.

But that has been irrelevant for the two freshmen phenoms this year. One look at the Scheerr record board, and it quickly becomes apparent -- each maintains a stranglehold on two Penn records. Combined, Stores and Frazee have become one of the most feared freshman duos in Penn women's swimming history.

"For both of them, it's incredible to come in and get records so fast," Penn coach Mike Schnur said. "I think we knew that Stores would get them because of her high school times, but Frazee has improved really quickly."

Improvement just scratches the surface of Frazee's giant leap onto the main stage of Ivy League backstrokers. In a sport where most athletes begin their competitive careers well under age 10, Frazee has emerged as a star on the swimming scene in just her second full season of intense practices.

"My theory is that there's no gravity in the water, so I can't fall over and kill myself," Frazee said of her origins in the sport.

While Frazee had been a synchronized swimmer for eight years prior to high school, she only began competitive swimming during her freshman year of high school -- and that was by default.

"Doing a sport was mandatory at my high school because we were terrible at athletics," Frazee said. "I had to do something because they wouldn't count synchronized swimming as a sport. It was more like I got pushed into [the swim team], and I complained the entire first season."

By her junior year, Frazee warmed to the idea of the competitive arena and quit synchronized swimming entirely -- she added the Hillandbrand Aquatics club team, and later Ford Aquatics, to her regular high school regimen during her senior year.

While Frazee was pressured into swimming, choosing backstroke as a specialty stroke was entirely her decision.

"I was like, there's not much to backstroke," Frazee said. "It's just freestyle on your back. That's how I picked it, actually."

Frazee's emergence as a national swimmer was largely unforeseen, making the suddenness of her improvement nothing short of remarkable.

"She has really been a diamond in the rough," Schnur said. "She has improved a lot while she has been here."

Not that she did too badly in her short stint as a full-time high school swimmer. During her senior year, Frazee blazed to a time of 58.40 in the 100 backstroke, grabbing the gold medal at the Arizona High School State Championships.

While the structure of a Division I program shocked the freshman in the early months of this season, the abrupt change paid early dividends. In only her second meet at Penn, Frazee inched under the then-oldest individual record in Penn women's swimming history -- Jacqueline Bak's 1992 100 backstroke -- with a time of 58.80 seconds.

And that catapulted the rest of her achievements for the season.

The following meet, at Harvard's Blodgett Pool, Frazee further lowered her record performance in the 100 back with a 57.70 finish. She also smashed Frances Pagano's nine-year-old 200 backstroke record, finishing in 2:04.74.

Swimming to record-breaking times has been nothing new for Frazee -- she definitively grabbed her high school record in the 100 well before her prowess at the collegiate level.

Intense practices, on the other hand, are a bit newer to the freshman star.

"Going in to the season, [my goal] was to not die in practice," Frazee said. "This was the first time I've done a season the whole way through. Practice has been the biggest mountain of the season.

"Living through a season of practices -- especially because I hadn't done morning practice before this year -- has been overwhelming."

The transition to Penn practices was not as violent for fellow freshman, Katie Stores, who arrived to the Quakers after two all-American high school seasons.

"She's always been a hard worker, a great team leader," Penn sophomore swimmer Rachel Zappalorti said.

Zappalorti also swam with Stores for three seasons at the Peddie School.

"She is the hardest worker ever. She was a very quiet girl, but you knew from the first meet when she gets into a race, she just goes. She's incredible."

Leaving her senior year at Peddie with three all-American worthy-times -- including a seventh-place ranking in the 100 freestyle among United States private school girls -- Stores was one of the most sought after recruits in the country.

But Stores is not one to talk much about her accolades.

"She's always been a modest girl, and she's the same as she's always been," Zappalorti said.

Stores may be quiet, but her results in the pool have been been the polar opposite.

Schnur expected these results and began his quest to suit Stores in Red and Blue long before her senior year of high school.

"It was a progression of events that really began from the year before [her senior year of high school], because I had seen Katie plenty from going to the meets," Schnur said "But in reality, we started seeing how good she really was, when I was recruiting Rachel Zappalorti."

Choosing among Penn, Virginia, William and Mary, Harvard and perennial Ivy thoroughbread Princeton, Stores finalized her decision with a recruiting trip to the Penn campus.

"That continues to happen as you get better and better athletes each year -- it opens the door for the next year's group of even faster swimmers," Schnur said. "We were very happy to get Katie away from Harvard and Princeton."

Stores has not only been the best freshman in the Ivy League this season, but also one of the best overall freestylers.

The Pennington, N.J., native has gone undefeated in the 200 freestyle during dual meets and has lost only once in the 50 and 100 freestyle, respectively -- she currently holds the Penn 100 and 200 freestyle records, and could break Linda Fescoe's one-year-old 50 freestyle record at the Ivy League championships.

"I'm really excited about the way Mike is going about tapering us," she said. "I have a lot of good expectations for what is going to come."

What is to come could be a first for Penn women's swimming.

Should Stores win any of her three individual events at Ivy League Championships -- she is seeded second in both the 100 and 200 freestyle -- she would be the first Penn women's swimmer to do so since Cathy Redzin's 100 butterfly victory in 1983.

Should she make the NCAA championship A-cut, she would be the first Quakers' swimmer ever to qualify for the national championship meet. This season, she has swum to two B-cut times with a 1:50.64 in the 200 freestyle and 50.95 in 100 freestyle.

An A-cut guarantees all athletes who swim that particular time will qualify for the NCAA championship meet in March.

The NCAA then fills the remainder of each event with those who have B-cut times, until each event is filled with an equal number of competitors, with a maximum of 270 participants at the NCAA meet.

While a bid to the NCAAs is alluring, a first-place finish at Ivies this weekend is Stores' top priority.

"I haven't really thought about [the A-cut]," Stores said. "My biggest goal right now is to get out and win Ivies."

Frazee, meanwhile, is on the verge of a B-cut in the 100 backstroke. And she too will concentrate only on what she can control.

"I feel like if you go into a race saying you need to go this exact time, you're going to be disappointed," Frazee said. "It's more fun to accidentally make cuts than is to get disappointed."

Being disappointed has not been an issue for either Frazee or Stores thus-far during the season -- both have experienced the best seasons of their swimming careers.

And both are looking forward to this weekend's Ivy League championship meet. After tapering for two weeks, they are poised to both demolish their previous records and possibly end up going where no Quakers' swimmer has gone before -- the NCAA championship meet.

But Frazee and Stores are not focusing on that, at least not yet.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.