W. Track impresses onlookers

Look, up in the sky. It's a bird! It's a plane! No, it's Karyn Smith and Angie Jimenez! Last Saturday at the highly competitive Yale Invitational, these two members of the women's indoor track team left many an onlooker with a sore neck. Smith, a co-captain and the team's only senior, soared to set a school record in the triple jump. Jimenez, a freshman, set a new standard in the pentathlon by turning in excellent performances in both the high jump and long jump. With a jump of 41-foot-3, Smith surpassed Ruth Greenfield's previous Penn indoor mark by more than three inches. The record was even more special because Smith and Greenfield were great friends before the former captain graduated in 1991. "I kind of latched onto her my freshman year," Smith said. "She was my mentor, my big sister. In fact she even called herself, 'Mother Ruth.' " What makes the record more remarkable is Smith slept only two hours the previous night. She had stayed up until 5 a.m. typing a law school application in her hotel room. When she found out she had broken the 41-foot mark, her reaction was, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. I've never gotten there before!" Jimenez returned home to Connecticut and broke the Penn record in the pentathlon. Thanks to personal records set in the high jump, long jump and sprint hurdles, she shattered former pentathlete Kelly Fay's three-year-old school record by 89 points. "She demolished it as a freshman," Smith said of Jimenez's record. However, Jimenez and Smith were not the only two athletes who excelled at Yale. There were many other outstanding performances. Freshman hurdler Daria Smith, who was rated as the nation's second-best sprint hurdler as a high school senior in Tuckahoe, N.Y., turned out a first-place performance in the 55-meter hurdles -- "One of the premier sprint hurdlers in the East," Penn assistant coach Tony Tenisci called her. She has only been beaten once this year. Junior Jenee Anzelone, freshman Michelle Belsley and sophomore Mary Conway finished second, third and fourth, respectively, in the 800 meters. Sophomore Jodi Myhre shined earlier this season at the West Point Tri-Meet, but was unable to compete in the 20-pound throw last weekend due to an injury. Luckily for the Quakers, junior Cheryl Edwards picked up the slack and finished fourth. Even junior Nicole Maloy approached the indoor high jump record of 5-foot-8 in only her second meet of the season. She had trained very little so far because she just returned from studying abroad in France last semester. Tenisci lauded sophomore long jumper Monica McCullough by calling her one of the best jumpers in the Ivy League. Despite jumping 18-1.75 at Yale, she has already jumped over 19 feet this year. "Never in my wildest expectations would we do this well," Karyn Smith said. "We're starting with times we finished with last year. Everyone is really pushing themselves." And as long as this level of success continues, the onlookers will have to continue to strain their necks to see the Penn athletes in action.