W. Swimming | Technical difficulties doom Quakers

The Penn women's swimming team smelled something fishy this weekend at the Ivy Championships, and it wasn't the pool water.

In the meet's opening event, the 200-yard freestyle relay, five of the eight relays were disqualified. Because of continued problems with the timing system, the 400-meter relay points were not counted towards Penn's score either.

Five disqualifications "are very highly unlikely things, and it seemed a little suspect to most of us," junior Stephanie Nerby said.

Due to the loss of points, the Penn women finished fourth with 948 points behind Harvard, Princeton, and Yale, respectively, in the three-day meet in East Meadow, N.Y., this weekend.

"I will never admit it, and the women will never admit it because in our minds we were third," coach Mike Schnur said. "None of us will ever accept fourth place in the meet because we were the victims of a shoddy timing system malfunction on Thursday night."

If the Red and Blue had not been disqualified, Schnur believes that they would have beaten Yale, which was one of the three teams that did not suffer from timing problems.

"Yale is one of our main competitors, and that hurt us because relays are worth a lot more," Nerby said, "so that put us about 100 points behind what we would've scored had the relay counted."

Despite the error with the timing system, the Quakers came away with an impressive eight pool records, the most they had ever seen at one meet. Also, Penn had at least one swimmer finish in the top ten of every event.

"I never had a women's team swim as well as we did this weekend," Schnur said.

Andrea Balint, Laura Klick, Carey Stauder, Samantha Husband and Jennifer Claydon made it to the 200-yard individual medley final, racking up 66 points. In the 500 free, Nerby finished sixth and fellow Quakers Naomi Delphin, Sara Ernst and Casey Barnes-Waychus all made the final.

Nerby had a personal best time both in the 500 and the one mile.

"I was really trying to race hard in the morning, so that I could make it into finals and score the most points for the team," Nerby said. "That was my main focus in the meet."

On the diving side, junior Melissa Gardel placed seventh in the 3-meter Saturday night. She was just the second 3-meter finalist the Quakers have had in the last 15 years.

"In years past, we had five or six girls who would be superstars, and then nobody else," Schnur said. "This year, we had an entire team of women who swam well."

The rest of the Quakers were in Cambridge, Mass., for the ECAC championships, where the women placed eighth and the men finished 10th. Sophomore Kyle Yeager broke a 17-year old record in the 200 backstroke, while Alex Kalish shattered his personal bests in the 500 and 200 free, placing fourth and eighth, respectively. Seniors Rob Casey, Nikki Malgeri, and Lauren Bergstrom each recorded personal bests in their last career meet.

Overall, a season of injuries, illness and timing malfunctions didn't stop the Quakers from keeping a positive outlook.

"We're all very frustrated and angry that we were cheated of third, but we were thrilled with the way we swam," Schnur said. "These girls couldn't have done any better."

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