They were tired, they were losing, and they were mentally and physically worn out.

So, with one event left in a Big Ten men's swimming and diving championship meet that belonged to the University of Minnesota, most teams were ready to pack up and head home.

Most teams besides Penn State, that is.

The Nittany Lion 400 freestyle relay team decided instead to put everything it had left into the final event, and it got a first-place finish, a Big Ten conference record, and a spot at the NCAA championships in return.

"Minnesota was running away with the meet and had the momentum," men's head coach Peter Brown said.

"To come out and pull that off, and at the same time break the conference record, is significant for the program, and it says something about the guys on the relay."

The members of the relay (freshman Todd Minnier, sophomore Eugene Botes, junior Bob Molet-ierre, and senior John Retrum) played a part in one of the most inspiring moments in the history of the program. With a time of 2:54.25, the team bettered the mark of 2:54.62 set by the University of Michigan in 1995.

Aside from the fact that the old record had stood for six years, what's also impressive is the list of names that was located beside it.

"Any time you break a conference record, you can be pretty sure that person who set that record was probably in the Olympics," Brown said. "That relay had three Olympians on it. Anybody that knows anything about swimming would recognize those names."

Although they weren't even aware of who had held the record when they learned they had broken it, the members of the relay were still stunned by their performance.

"Everyone was so surprised," Moletierre said. "Every guy on the team had amazing splits. It was so awesome, and it was just such a shock that we broke it."

The shock wasn't a result of any questions of the team's talent and abilities.

Instead, it was the result of a combination of four athletes who had already participated in, and made finals in, multiple events in the course of the three-day meet.

"It was weird because all four of us had just got done swimming," Moletierre, the 50 freestyle champion, said.

"We were all so tired, and we had all had our longer events to swim that day."

For example, Minnier had already swam two 100 freestyles and two 200 butterflys before the record-setting relay, and he swam them well enough to place fifth in the finals of each event.

"That was his fifth swim of the day," Brown said. "He did 700 yards of hard swimming. That's an awful lot in one day for anybody, especially for a swimmer in his first Big Ten meet."

According to Minnier, however, any feelings or thoughts of fatigue faded as the event drew closer.

"By that point, the adrenaline was running through us and we were all pretty excited to swim," Minnier said. "It was easier than I thought it would be."

And, even though they were excited before the event, nothing could compare to the feeling of satisfaction after it was over.

"Any time you win a relay or individual event its special," Retrum said. "To do that on the last day in the last event, even though things didn't go our way during the meet, was a nice note to finish on."

Although he is already looking ahead to the team's next competition at the NCAA championships at Texas A&M on March 22-24 , Brown agreed.

"It definitely put an exclamation mark on the meet for us," he said. "Without it, we would have come out pretty happy, but that definitely ended the meet on a very high note."