Rudolph steals show

In one of the Northeast's deepest women's cross country fields assembled this season, one runner stood out. Providence senior Amy Rudolph made a mockery of Saturday's Boston College Invitational, finishing the 3.1 mile course in 17 minutes, four seconds -- a full 28 seconds ahead of sophomore teammate, and overall second-place finisher, Marie McMahon. Although Providence won the meet, its last scorer finishing ahead of Penn's first, the Quakers' performance was anything but disappointing. In this season of revolving heroes, in which a different runner has finished first in each meet, senior Jane Kim was Penn's ace of the day. Kim's time of 19:13 shaved 29 seconds off last week's mark. But Penn's strong showing was not an individual effort. The Quakers' game plan worked flawlessly. The pack, which broke up early last weekend, stuck together throughout the entire race. Penn's top four runners, seniors Kim, Maggie Morrow and Jenee Anzelone and sophomore Michelle Belsley, all crossed the finish line within four seconds of each other, picking up 37th through 40th place. Junior Melanie Gesker completed the Quaker scoring with a solid 52nd place, giving Penn seventh place in the 20-team meet. The progress of freshman Christine Stavalone was noticeable. She improved upon last week's 20:16 by 15 seconds, despite tougher conditions, including rain and mud. "The weather was both a plus and a minus. It slowed us down, but also cooled us off," Stavalone said. The meet was an important one to the Quakers' because it exposed them to a variety of teams they may face in the postseason. Among the teams running at Franklin Park were familiar foes Dartmouth, Brown, Harvard and Columbia, as well as not-so-familiar non-conference opponents South Florida, Moravian, Bowdoin, Maine and Hofstra. Overall, the Ivy League schools performed well. Dartmouth finished second overall, with four runners in the top 20. Brown finished one spot ahead of Penn at No. 6, with Harvard finishing just behind the Quakers. Columbia was the lone Ivy to finish in the bottom half of the standings, placing 17th. Everything seemed to come together for the Quakers at Franklin Park. They got strong performances from the veterans, a promising showing from the freshmen and executed their game plan perfectly.