At 6:15 a.m., the Penn State campus is cold and quiet as students sleep, dreaming of warm places. But inside McCoy Natatorium, it is warm and somewhat noisy as the women's swimming team splashes through its morning practice.

Gatorade squeeze bottles, flippers, and kickboards line the pool deck as Coach Bob Krimmel reminds the swimmers that the weather could be worse, referring to the overnight wind chill temperatures in the Midwest. He then spots Alaska native Stacee Frost and jokingly tells her that Alaska is coming east.

The Lady Lions hit the water, spending the next hour swimming laps. They divide themselves so that there are four to five swimmers in a lane, and they follow each other with machine-like precision.

"The hardest part about it is getting here and getting in," Krimmel said of the early practice. "You have got to be a nut to do this sport."

Nuts or not, the swimmers are used to getting up for the early workouts. In the fall, the early practices were held on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, but now are held only on Tuesdays and Thursdays and will stop completely in about two weeks.

"Early practices are not unusual," Assistant Coach Mary Bolich said. "They're pretty typical, most teams do it."

According to Krimmel, the morning practices are more for conditioning, while the afternoon practices concentrate on the different swimming strokes. The distance swimmers especially use the morning practice for conditioning, starting practice 15 minutes earlier than the rest of the team.

"It's needed for the type of swimming we do," junior Regan Stacey said. "I'd rather get the sleep, but I need to do the work. It gives me incentive. I'll get better if I go."

Stacey and the other distance swimmers are respected by their teammates for the work they do and the extra time they put in.

"Not only do they come in earlier, they do longer sets of training," backstroker Jen Davis said. "They do a lot more yardage than the rest of us. It takes a special breed of person to be a distance swimmer. I don't know if I could be one myself."

The practice continues as Krimmel gives new instructions and remains eager and energetic. Based on facial expression alone, he seems to be the only person happy to be up and around at this early hour.

"I love morning workouts," he said. "I think I annoy (the swimmers) because they come in quiet with their eyes almost shut and I'm usually this bright-eyed and ready to go."

At about 7:15 a.m., Krimmel announces that practice is over and the swimmers quickly leave the pool and head for the locker room. The team seems to have a sense of relief that another morning practice has come and gone.

"I hate morning workouts," sprinter Trina Sullivan said. "But, they're important for our training."

Sullivan, who never had morning practices before coming to Penn State, said she believes that some morning workouts are better than others.

"It's nice not getting up at the same time, but sometimes when you do your work early, it's tough to get to bed," she said. "If you only get five hours of sleep, this is the last place you want to be."

Other swimmers don't seem to mind the early practices.

"I like it, because we're able to do a little hard stuff in the morning and the afternoon, instead of doing all the hard stuff in the afternoon," backstroker Carrie Kundrat said.