It's not about winning or losing, it's how you play the game. Winning isn't everything.

This seems to be the attitude of head swimming and diving coach Bill Dorenkott. While the season is still young (the team has had only two meets), the coach seems to only be looking towards the end result.

"Swimming is different than a team sport where you base success on wins and losses," he said. "A team could go 0-10 and still place in the top ten at Big Ten's."

Big Ten's and NCAA's is what the team is focusing on the most this season. The fact that the team travels to Long Island, NY this weekend for the 2001 U.S. Open seems trivial to the coach and the team. The U.S. Open will follow a schedule consisting of morning preliminaries and evening finals. The meet starts today and runs through Sunday.

The U.S. Open, which is in its 17th year of competition, will attract over 800 athletes from across the globe, including former Olympians and current world record holders. Swimmers, who accounted for 16 of 26 individual gold medals at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney, competed in the 1999 U.S. Open held in San Antonio, TX.

The Nittany Lions, which opened their season with a strong win over fellow Pennsylvania schools Villanova, Bucknell and West Chester, dropped a tough one against Virginia, the reigning ACC champions, on Nov. 18. The team dropped in the rankings from 16th to 25th, but again, this doesn't seem to bother the coach.

"The bottom line is what we do at the end of the year," Dorenkott said. "If we're going to be successful as a program, it takes a year round commitment. We have to ask ourselves two questions: How good are we going to be and how hard are we willing to work to get there?"

The coach even seemed to feel that the team had a better showing against the University of Virginia than the week before against the PA teams.

"The intensity was good. It sets us up well for February and March," he said.

"The people that got the job done during the summer are having a great fall."

Senior captain Bob Molettiere, who has already qualified for NCAA's in the 50-meter freestyle, emphasized the point of practicing hard in preparation for the end of the season.

"A lot of teams make the mistake of focusing on meets now. The harder we work now, the faster we'll swim when it really matters (at NCAA's)," he said.

"We went down to Virginia just hoping to swim well against a good team. Our intense training is starting to show. It doesn't really matter who won. I've seen a definite improvement in the team over the season. I feel better than I ever did in the past."

While Molettiere is aware of the extreme competition the team will be facing this weekend, he's not nervous.

"You know you're going to swim fast because there is so much good competition, Molettiere said. "Personally, I get excited when I'm swimming against such good swimmers."

The team will have the rest of the month off to train for the season.