State College, Pa. - Penn State won 13 of 17 events in claiming its fifth-consecutive dual meet victory by the score 177-125 over James Madison Saturday afternoon at McCoy Natatorium. The meet was the Lions' final dual meet of the regular season and marked the last McCoy Natatorium appearance for the squad's seven seniors.

The Lions set the tone early by taking first-place in each of the first nine events. Sean Martin (Lewisburg, Pa.) paced the Lions' swimmers with first-place finishes in the 100 back and 100 fly. Chris Alderman (Arlington, Va.) dominated the diving competitions by finishing first overall in both the 1-meter (329.85) and the 3-meter (325.80).

In the relay events Penn State was equally as dominant as both foursomes achieved record performances. In the 200 medley relay, the team of Josh Weaver (York, Pa.), Matt Teeter (Gettysburg, Pa.), Eugene Botes (Glen Mills, Pa.) and Brian Hostetler (Chambersburg, Pa.) recorded a season-best time of 1:30.48. The 200 freestyle squad of Hostetler, Bob Molettiere (Harleysville, Pa.), Botes and Holden Comeau (Carlisle, Pa.) set a new McCoy Natatorium record with their winning time of 1:21.32.

"Things are falling into place for us right now," Penn State Head Coach Peter Brown explained. "We have some people coming to life and our main objective right now will be to get some rest and ready ourselves for Big Tens."

Other individual winners for Penn State included Martin Schierhorn (Zappendorf, Germany) (1000 free), Steve Hodgins (Holmdel, Pa.) (200 free), Mike Laskowski (Redmond, Wash.) (100 breast), Sammy Chong (Curacao, West Indies) (200 fly), Rob Balazs (East Stroudsburg, Pa.) (50 free) and Braedan Quigley (State College, Pa.) (200 back).

"This is the most competitive team in my time here at Penn State, it is going to be very difficult in choosing who makes the roster that will travel to the Big Ten Championships," Brown said.

Penn State (6-1) returns to action on Feb. 24-26 when it travels to Ann Arbor, Mich., and attempts to defend its 1999 conference title at the 2000 Big Ten Conference Championships.