W. Swimming wins at Army

Coming off its most intense training of the year in Boca Raton, Fla., the Penn women's swim team (6-1, 3-1 Ivy) jumped right back into competition on Saturday, traveling to Army. Despite the entire team being tired from the training trip and school-record holder Katie Stores out of competition with mononucleosis, the Quakers rolled over the Cadets, 142-91. "We actually swam better than I thought we would," Penn coach Mike Schnur said. "Usually we're pretty beat up after training. They surprised me. They had a lot of good swims, and we didn't even bring some of our best kids to the meet." Because of Penn's early dominance, Schnur took the opportunity to stray from the typical lineup, giving swimmers the opportunity to compete in different events than normal. "It's a nice thing to do when you know that you're the dominant team in the meet," senior co-captain Jessica Anders said. "It makes it a much more relaxed environment to be able to swim in." Junior transfer Anne Tudryn, -- a Penn record holder in the 200 breaststroke -- took advantage of the changed lineup, grabbing first in the 200 butterfly in 2:08.57. Junior Jen Block -- a Penn record holder in the 100 breaststroke -- complemented Tudryn's efforts later in the meet when she took first in the 500 freestyle in 5:20.01. "Both of them I expected to win their events," Schnur said. "Anne's just a great swimmer, and Jen does a bunch of training with the distance swimmers in practice." Penn had little trouble taking care of Army in each of the events and brought home other first- place finishes behind Kathleen Holthaus in the 1000 freestyle, Anders in the 200 freestyle, Laura Hotaling in the 50 freestyle, Margaret Jones in the 400 individual medley, Megan Daney in the 100 freestyle and Erica Gentilucci in the 200 backstroke. In the midst of their training, the Quakers finished third in the Florida Atlantic University Invitational on what was the only cold day of eight that the team trained. "The whole point of the meet was to swim tired," Anders said. "It wasn't the best meet we ever swam, but considering how tired we were, it wasn't bad." Penn finished third in the meet behind Division I swimming powerhouse, University of Washington, and Oakland University. After the toughest training of the year -- which included five hours per day in the water, dry land training and additional weight training -- the Quakers will now begin the bulk of the Ivy League season. The Quakers await meets against Navy and Brown this Saturday and Sunday followed by a double-dual meet with Yale and Dartmouth to close out the Ivy League regular season the following weekend. Both the Bears and Elis soundly beat Penn in last year's meets. The Quakers have been impressive in Ancient Eight competition so far, having beaten both Columbia and Harvard. Harvard, meanwhile, has defeated Brown, and Columbia has beaten Yale. "I think the next couple of Ivy meets are going to be pretty competitive," Anders said. "I think it's pretty clear that we're a better team than Dartmouth so that shouldn't be an issue. "But we swim Yale at that meet also. That's always been a big challenge. As far as Brown goes, I think Brown is anybody's meet."

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