M. Track excels in Heps tune up

The goal of this year's Penn men's indoor track team is to win the Heptagonals -- the conference championship. For the Quakers to do that, coach Charlie Powell is gradually building up his talented squad, making sure it peaks at just the right time. Penn took another step in that progression this past weekend, competing at Cornell in a meet that also involved Fordham and Villanova. There was no team scoring at the event, which probably was a good thing for the Quakers' opposition. "If they had it, we would have won easily," Powell said. There were plenty of strong performances for the Quakers, with a number of first-place finishers and IC4A qualifiers. "It was a very good competitive group that did a very nice job," Powell said. "I can't complain at all." Freshman Matt Wilkinson ran well enough to win the 5,000-meter race in 15:34. In the middle distances, junior Jeff Willard placed second in the 1,000-meter with a time of 2:32.7. Penn performed well in the sprints. Two Quakers posted IC4A-qualifying times in the 400-meter race. Junior Kelsey Armstrong and sophomore Chris Harper finished second and third, respectively, with times of 49.0 and 49.2 seconds. Penn suffered a couple near misses in IC4A qualifying. Freshman James Primerano, who finished first in the 500-meter run at 1:05.6, just missed qualifying for the IC4As by two tenths of a seconds, despite the fact it was the first time he had ever competed in the event Another freshman, Carl Eklof, finished second in the 55-meter high hurdles. Eklof's time of 7.72 seconds was only .02 seconds off of a qualifying time. "Those are the type you pull your hair out for," Powell said. Another noteworthy performance was that of Clarence Hinton. In only his second year of competing in the event, the junior produced a personal-best toss of 55-2 to win the 35-pound weight competition. The throw was only one and a half inches shy of qualifying Hinton for the IC4As. "I was pretty happy with it," Hinton said of his performance. "Especially since I haven't really gotten into full-fledged throwing [in practice]. I've just been doing mostly drills." Other standouts for Penn included senior Henry Hipps and sophomore Greg Schroeder. Hipps tied for first in the high jump with a jump of 6-7. Schroeder qualified for the IC4As with his second-place effort of 15-6 in the pole vault. A number of Quakers competed in events in which they usually do not perform. These changes were a refreshing break from the monotony of competing in the same event throughout the season. "If you do something too often, it gets boring," Powell said. "You get mentally flat." Powell also explained that he wanted to get some of his distance runners in speed events to work on their speed, and he wanted some of his sprinters running longer races to build their endurance. These reversals of roles should help the Penn squad as the season continues. "We went up there with the understanding that we were going to have some fun with track and field and do some things the guys don't do normally," Powell said. Of his team's performance and progress, Powell concluded, "There's nothing going on right now that would make me unhappy."