M. Track still has work to accomplish

The first significant meet of the season for the Penn men's indoor track team yielded some strong individual performances. But the results left the Quakers still with some work to do. The host Midshipmen won the meet Saturday at Navy handily with 87 points to Penn's 51. Virginia finished third with 43 points. Four Quakers performed well enough to qualify for the important IC4A meet to be held at Princeton March 5. Senior Mamadou Johnson won the pole vault with a vault of 16-5 and sophomore Aric Shalev won the high jump with a leap of 6-11. Sophomore David Rechtweg's 6-9 high jump and freshman Greg Davis' time of 6.49 seconds in the 55-meter dash were both good for second-place finishes and also earned them trips to the IC4As. Assistant coach Nathan Taylor was especially pleased with the Quakers' performance in the high jump. "The biggest performance was Aric Shalev's," Taylor said. "I think his 6-11 puts him second on the all-time indoor list at Penn. And he was more than adequately backed up by David Rechtweg." Sophomore sprinter Chris Harper turned in another Quaker first in the 400-meter dash. Harper's time of 50.09 seconds narrowly missed qualifying for the IC4As, however. "He ran just fast enough to win," Taylor said. "He was in complete control of the race." Taylor's review of the team's overall performance was mixed, however. "In some respects we're happy," Taylor said. "Some of the guys did better than we thought they would. We're pleased with the guys that qualified for the IC4As." But, Taylor added, "We're not anywhere near where we'll be in six weeks. We've got a lot of work ahead of us. We have to improve our intensity. We can't rest on the fact that on paper we have a strong team, because paper doesn't win championships." · While the rest of the Quakers competed at Navy, senior Henry Hipps competed at the Yale Invitational this Saturday instead. Hipps won the pentathlon there for the third straight year with 3,758 points, the third-highest point total in the history of the meet. With such a strong performance, Hipps had little trouble overcoming the opposition, as he finished 400 points ahead of the next highest finisher. The performance also qualified Hipps for the IC4As. Said Taylor, "He really dominated the competition."