2nd place, but they're 'peaking'

The men's swim team is supposed to peak twice in the season, according to coach Mike Schnur.

The first of those two peaks came this weekend at the Nike Invitational, where the Quakers took second place behind host Kenyon, the favorite.

The 400 free relay team of Devon Carr, Pat Gallagher, Chris Buckand Kyle Loughran took first and set both a Penn and Kenyon pool record.

"I was happy with my swims," Gallagher said. "I dropped some times which is always good. But I am even more excited about how we swam as a team."

Penn's Kyle Yeager and James Fee now hold other Kenyon pool records in the 200 IM and 500 free, respectively.

The team of Larkin MacDonald, Chaz Maul, Brad Farris and Devon Carr finished second in the 200 medley relay, breaking a Penn record in the process.

Seven non-conference teams participated and Penn coach Schnur said it was his team's lack of depth that kept it from winning the meet.

"We are scaling back our swimmers so they only participate in their best events," Schnur said.

Kenyon, a D-III dynasty, was able to win the meet without winning a single race, in part due to the large number of Kenyon swimmers competing.

However, Schnur feels that if the Penn matches the times from this weekend it will be a difficult team to beat.

Other notable performances from this weekend include that of sophomore James Fee, who was named the co-swimmer of the meet.

Schnur thinks Fee is becoming the best distance swimmer in Penn's history and he can do sprint events as well.

"The team had an excellent meet this weekend and outperformed our competition," Fee said in an e-mail. "Our hard work this fall paid off and we're already looking forward to championships in March."

Chris Buck broke what Schnur called a another huge barrier in the 50 free, with a time of 20.8 seconds.

Penn returns to the water against Columbia at home on Saturday, but don't look for as many record breaking performances -- the squad is not expected to peak again until the beginning of March.

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