Wrestlers focused on the postseason

The Penn wrestling team is coming down the homestretch. The end of the season is near, with the Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association and NCAA championship meets rapidly approaching. But there is still a little bit of business to be taken care of. Before the Quakers can concentrate fully on the upcoming championships, they must close out their dual meet season. In the next-to-last team event of the season, Penn (10-3, 5-1 EIWA, 3-1 Ivy League) will host a quadrangular meet featuring Princeton, Franklin & Marshall, and East Stroudsburg tomorrow at the Palestra at 11 a.m. It might appear the Quakers have little to gain by wrestling this weekend. After all, a recent win by Cornell over Brown virtually assured the Big Red the Ivy title and relegated Penn to a probable second-place finish. But on the contrary, the Quakers do have much to gain. Their main goal throughout the season has been to continually improve in preparation for the EIWA and NCAA meets, and this weekend represents one more step. "I think we're coming to the conclusion of the dual meet season feeling pretty good about our progress," Penn coach Roger Reina said. "But there are still some things we have to fine-tune going into this weekend and into the Drexel dual [Tuesday]. We're going to have to continue to pick up the intensity going into the Easterns." Strangely, the loss of the Ivy title could work in the Quakers' favor. Their initial disappointment at not being able to repeat as champions has given way to a desire to perform well at season's end. "It's affecting us as a inspiration to gear up and be fully prepared at the Eastern championships to prove who's the better team," Reina said. "Although that won't affect the Ivy standings for this year, it's the thing that we do have control over and it's an opportunity to redeem ourselves to a certain extent." The quad meet could help Penn in another way. All three opponents are EIWA members, so the Quakers could help their seeding in the EIWA championships. Wrestlers are seeded based on their head-to-head records, but if those are inconclusive, the margin of victory can determine a seed. Some big wins tomorrow could help Penn immensely. "We want to spread the gap as much as possible with each of these opponents," Reina said. To do that, the Quakers will have to outperform their competition. Although it has won more Ivy wrestling titles than any school but Cornell, Princeton (4-9, 1-3 Ivy) is struggling this year. "They've got a rich tradition," Reina said, "but right now they haven't been able to recruit effectively, and they're spotty." Penn's other two opponents may pose more of a threat. Franklin & Marshall is only 2-14 overall, but, "they've recently been settling into what I feel is a more competitive lineup. They seem to be gaining momentum," Reina noted. East Stroudsburg, at 12-5, will likely be the Quakers' most formidable opposition tomorrow. The Warriors defeated Penn last year, 25-12, in a match the Quakers may have been overlooking. "We were coming off our win over Brown, which pretty much clinched the [Ivy] title last year," Reina said. "I think our wrestlers had a little letdown at that point." But don't look for that to happen this year, Reina added. "We've been stressing the impact of not overlooking any of these opponents, and our goal is to go in and dominate all three of these meets," he said.