M. Swimming | McHugh helps pace Penn's 12 team records

There is only one word to describe freshman breaststroker Brendan McHugh - fast.

After the Ivy League Championship meet two weekends ago, McHugh broke four school records, made the NCAA B cuts, qualified for World Championship trials, was named first team All-Ivy and is now the fourth fastest 200-yard breastroke swimmer in the 17-18 age group in American history.

"He swam way faster than a lot of people thought he would," coach Mike Schnur said. "I think he swam faster than even he thought he'd go."

And McHugh wasn't the only one who came out on top during the championships.

The Quakers came in sixth with 808.5 points on the way to setting an impressive twelve school records - which was itself a Penn mark for records broken in a single meet. Princeton won with 1663.5 points.

Besides McHugh, junior James Fee also qualified for NCAA B cuts. Fee and freshman Cameron Hood will both join McHugh in World Championship Trials this summer.

"I was very happy," Fee said. "The meet was incredibly fast, but everyone did a good job."

The swimmers' combined efforts led to especially strong times in the relay events.

"We didn't just break our school records in those relays, we killed them," Schnur said. "Usually when you break the relay you break it by a couple of tenths or half seconds, and then to beat it by five seconds is pretty cool."

Junior Larkin Macdonald joined Fee with his own personal best, placing 11th in the 200-yard backstroke with a time of 1:47:33 - 3.5 seconds under his best time.

The only senior at the meet, Chaz Maul, finished fourth in 100-yard breast, improving on his performance from last year by almost two seconds.

"His time this year would've won last year by a ton," Schnur said. "We just happened to have three great freshmen in our league this year that finished ahead of him, but he had a great swim."

Out of the 19 swimmers on the team, 10 are freshmen, so Schnur is looking forward to 2010.

"It's a great sign for the future," he said. "We're really going to be a good team next year."

And the freshmen clearly contributed to the outcome of the meet. McHugh finished second in the 200-yard breaststroke with a time of 1:56.98 and set a new school record in the 100-yard breaststroke, finishing in 53.97.

On the diving side, the freshmen also overcame odds to come out on top.

Jeff Cragg was named second team All-Ivy and came in second in the 3-meter and third in the 1-meter event. Alex Marple came in seventh in the 3-meter.

"We've had one [male finalist] in the past 25 years, so to have two of them in the same event at that meet was pretty neat," Schnur said.

According to Schnur, even though Cragg finished second, "everybody who watched that event thought he was the best diver in that meet. He lost because he's only a freshman, and some of the coaches up-scored the other guy because he's a junior."

The Quakers finished a place higher than last year, and only the strong output of Columbia's senior class on the final day prevented the Quakers from overtaking the Lions for fifth.

However, the last night of the meet was still a success for Penn, as it broke a school record in all but one event, and McHugh won the 200-yard breast.

As the season ends, Schnur has high hopes for McHugh's continued success.

"I think Brendan set himself up to be, if not the best swimmer in the league, then in the top couple," he said.

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