Both track teams falter at Heps

Men deal with mounting obstacles Expectations weren't especially high for the Penn men's indoor track team this weekend. After a winter of discontent and a rash of injuries, the Quakers early season hopes of winning the Heptagonals championships had been reduced to hopes for a strong effort at Harvard Saturday and Sunday. They didn't disappoint. The team finished a respectable fourth with 65 points. Penn came in well behind first-place Princeton, which scored 124 points, and second-place Army, which tallied 119. But the Quakers waged their own war for third, battling Navy all the way. In the end, though, it wasn't enough, as the Midshipmen won the final event to slide past the Quakers. "It was kind of a strange meet," Penn coach Charlie Powell said. "Navy and us were fighting for third, and Princeton and Army were fighting for first. It was a real battle." The loss in the final event, the pole vault, was particularly galling for the Quakers. With Mamadou Johnson, the team's top vaulter, out for the season with a wrist injury, Penn was helpless as Navy took the event and third place. "It's kind of tough to take since we normally have Mamadou take the thing," Powell said. "But that's life." Despite the disappointment of fourth place, the Quakers performed as expected, Powell said. "I was happy with the way a lot of guys did," he said. "We figured that if we had a good Heps, we'd score 67 points, and if we had a great meet maybe 75 or 80. So we did about what we expected." One of those with whom Powell was pleased was Henry Hipps. In the words of assistant coach Nathan Taylor, the senior was "undeniable" on Saturday, winning both the high jump at 6 feet, 11 inches and the pentathlon. Hipps's total of 3,994 points in the pentathlon set a Heptagonal meet record. And his time in the pentathlon high hurdles even qualified him for IC4As. The total performance was good enough for Hipps to finish second in the voting for the meet's most valuable athlete. "He turned in one of the best performances in the country in the pentathlon, which was particularly good considering he won the high jump earlier in the day," Taylor said. "He had 12 hours of competition that day." Sophomore David Rechtweg finished second in the high jump, also with a jump of 6-11. It was an "outstanding" performance that fired up the rest of the team, according to Taylor. "Every kid on the team was just pumped by it," Taylor said. "It certainly helps the confidence level to see that other athletes who have trained as hard as you have are reaping the dividends." Penn collected another 1-2 finish in the 400-meter dash. Sophomore Chris Harper won in 48.17 seconds, and sophomore Clive Brown took second. Harper's time, according to Powell, was "one of the fastest ever in Heps history." Though the Quakers had no other first-place finishers, they did turn in several other strong efforts. Freshman John Yu finished sixth in the long jump at 22-101U2 and fifth in the 55-meter dash with a clocking of 6.47. The fact that Yu scored as a freshman bodes well for his future, Taylor said. "Anytime a freshman scores in the Heptagonal meet in an individual event, he's going to be a force to be reckoned with in the future, because it's just so competitive," he said. Overall, it was a solid effort, said Powell. "We were pointing to this and we did what we thought we would do," Powell said. "I can't say I'm displeased with this. We got all the points we thought we could."