W. Swimming shatters 10 team records

The scoreboard doesn't always tell the whole story. Regardless of its sixth-place finish at the Ivy League Championships this weekend at Princeton's Denunzio Pool, the Penn women's swim team set 10 school records -- a more accurate measure of its historic season. Penn tallied a score of 366 in the three-day competition, behind Princeton (799.5), Harvard (633), Brown (600.5), Yale (513) and Columbia (384). Dartmouth and Cornell placed seventh and eighth, respectively, with scores of 187 and 166. Although the Quakers improved upon last year's score of 335, they returned to the familiar sixth-place position that they had occupied the past two seasons. Princeton seized the lead during the first day of competition and never let go, scoring early and often to take its fourth consecutive Ivy League championship. "Princeton just has a far superior team than the rest of the league," Penn junior Kathleen Holthaus said. "But they give everyone someone to look up to and something to strive for." The weekend's real battle was for second place, as Harvard overtook Brown's early lead on the second day and managed to hold on despite fierce competition from Brown and Yale. Perennial Penn distance powerhouse Holthaus rewrote the Quakers' recordbooks in all three of her events at the meet. Although Holthaus placed fourth in the 500 freestyle, her time of four minutes, 56.02 seconds was an improvement upon her own Penn record by 0.11 seconds. She nabbed silver in the 1000 free with her time of 10:00.27, almost four seconds faster than she swam last year at the same meet. "It's always my goal to get a best time, no matter what my competitors do, so I was really happy with my swims this weekend," Holthaus said. Holthaus also placed fourth in the 1650 free with her time of 16:48.32, erasing her own Penn record. She narrowly missed a medal to three Princeton swimmers including Sarah Fraumann, whose time automatically qualified her for the NCAA Championships. Fraumann was named Outstanding Swimmer of the Meet after earning three individual victories in the 1000 free, 1650 free and 500 free and a team win in the 800 free relay. Penn sprint phenom Katie Stores made a decisive comeback on the final day of competition by taking silver in the 100 free. Stores, who was out for the most of the second half of the season with mononucleosis, demonstrated that she was back in top form. The sophomore broke her own Penn record, set at last year's Ivy championships, with a time of 50.70. Despite missing first place by 0.62 seconds, the mark was an improvement upon her fifth-place finish at last year's championships in the event with a time of 51.14. One of the weekend's more surprising performances came from Jen Block, whose finish in the 100 breaststroke broke a team record set earlier in the year by Penn junior Anne Tudryn. Block's races placed her third in the 100 breast and fourth in the 200 breast. The Quakers did not enter the diving events, due to a policy that allows only 18 team members at the meet. "Of course we're looking to move up in the rankings next year, but we just finished a season," Block said. "We're really just basking in the glow of a really successful year."

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