W. Track wins Cornell Invite

The Penn women's track team continued its successful streak Saturday at the Cornell Invitational. Coming off an outstanding performance at West Point and a victory over Princeton, the Quakers finished in first place in Ithaca. Senior co-captain Maggie Morrow saw this success as part of Penn's season-long plan. "This is what the training was supposed to accomplish," Morrow said. "Everyone is supposed to peak now." Morrow thought the team's performance last week against Princeton was stronger than at Cornell. The Cornell meet was more low-key than Princeton, and now most people are focused on the upcoming Heptagonal Championships, which are less than two weeks away. Cornell finished second out of the five teams competing with 67.5 points, 15.5 points behind Penn's 83. The other three teams were all from Canada, and finished with 56, 43 and 19.5 points. Once again, one of the most successful events at the meet for Penn was the high jump. Freshman Tiffany Archer and Senior Nicole Maloy finished first and second respectively with jumps of 5-feet-6, and 5-4.25. Archer and Maloy have finished in first and second place in practically every meet of the season. Archer believes their success comes from hard work and hopes they will continue to do as well at Heptagonals. Her goal is to break the school record of 5-9 set by Maloy. She came closest last week at Princeton with a jump of 5-8.25. The Quakers saw a tremendous improvement in the performances of their distance runners. For most of the season, Penn coach Betty Costanza has spoken about the need to improve in that area. With the return of Morrow, improvement has been evident. For the second consecutive meet, Morrow won the 5,000 meters. She finished 17.5 seconds ahead of Cornell's Megan Kilbride with a time of 17 minutes, 59.5 seconds. Junior Melanie Gesker finished third. Senior Jenee Anzelone added to the success of the distance runners with a victory in the 800 meters. She was able to edge past Cornell's Kate Walker by one tenth of a second. One reason for these great performances was the lack of solid competition. Cornell is a legitimate Ivy League power, but the three Canadian teams were not as strong as most American schools. Morrow said although the Canadian schools had good jumpers, they did not seem as strong as many American schools in the other events. Archer added they were not very strong in most field events. Still, the victorious meet gives Penn another reason to feel confident about the Heptagonals. After three consecutive successful meets, the Quakers see no reason why their dominance should falter. "We can definitely win Heps if we compete as well as we did against Princeton," Archer said.