M. X-C will get taste of Heps

If last Saturday's meet left a bitter taste, the Penn men's cross country team hopes that today's race will be the sugar to help the medicine go down. The Quakers travel to New York to take on Princeton, Army and Manhattan in Van Cortlandt Park today – giving Penn a chance to preview both the course and the opponents it will encounter again at the Heptagonals in late October. While giving this young team more experience, today's meet will allow Penn to test the ground of the site of one of the most important meets of the season. Penn will be relying on the continued leadership of junior co-captains Terry McLean and Joe Hall, who have consistently given top results this season. At the first meet with Navy, Maryland, Delaware and Mt. St. Mary's they clinched second- and third-place finishes, while last weekend at the Spike Shoe Invitational at Penn State McLean placed fifth amid runners from 14 teams including the nationally-ranked Nittany Lions. "If I lead – it's by example," McLean said. "It's to believe in the coach and do what he says – running smart everyday." Because McLean and Hall traditionally have run and finished together in meets for the three years they have been on the Quaker squad, Hall's 14th-place finish, nine places behind McLean, came as a surprise to Quaker coach Charlie Powell and the rest of the team. But McLean, the teammate and friend who knows Hall best, believes that Hall will bounce back. "He'll be running with me later on in the season," McLean said. "He's usually ahead of me – he'll be there when it counts." McLean and Hall hope to finish in the top 10 today, and will follow the overall team strategy – using the strength built up from intensive long-distance training as an advantage. "When I go out into the race – I plan to sit back a while, wait for [the leaders] to get tired, [and] after two or three miles I'll get strong," McLean said. Importantly, the rest of the team will need to follow this model according to Powell. Behind frontrunners McLean and Hall, sophomores Kurt Sprowls, Jack McMullan and Alvarez Symonette will pick up the pace with freshman Matt Wilkinson. "We need to run well together, we can't have any breakdowns," Powell said. "They're a strong pack, they need to be staying together and helping each other out– because they certainly didn't at Penn State." It's time to swallow hard. This spoonful is going to be big.