M. Track falls by single point

The Penn men's track team's meet against Princeton Saturday at Franklin Field was expected to be close and highly competitive. Both teams are among the best in the East and are ranked in the top 20 nationally. The Tigers are the defending Heptagonals champions, while the Quakers were looking like the favorites to end the Tigers' run this year. The meet turned out to be the best of the Ivy season. Almost every event featured an Intercollegiate Amateur Athletic Association of America-qualifying performance for each of its top three places. In fact, Penn had 19 IC4A qualifiers to nine for Princeton. But the Quakers fell to the Tigers in the end, losing by one point, 88-87. "We are definitely disappointed," captain Kelsey Armstrong said. "We were hoping to send a message to Princeton that we would be tough to beat at Heps, but we didn't." The meet was truly decided by a matter of inches, misses and seconds. In the 100-meter dash, Chris Harper finished second by three one-thousandths of a second. In the pole vault, Greg Schroeder finished third by having one more miss than the second-place finisher, while the same thing happened to Aric Shalev in the high jump. Penn also lost the services and the scoring of Jon Yu and Clive Brown due to injuries during the meet. This theme was played throughout the meet -- Penn continually came up just short. "If any of 18 athletes did what we expected them to do," assistant coach Nathan Taylor said, "we could have won." Another key factor was the meet was a tri-meet in which Yale also competed. While the Elis' 27 points placed them far behind the other two teams, they were key points in determining the outcome. Had Penn been scored head-to-head with Princeton, the Quakers would have won by 10 points. Penn did receive several top performances that allowed it to almost come out on top. The best event for the Quakers was the javelin, in which they swept the top three places. All-American John Taylor won with a throw of 216 feet, 3 inches despite remaining hampered by a groin injury. Penn also had two new IC4A qualifiers, as Matt Spoerndle threw a distance of 196-7 and Corey Shannon reached 191-5 with his throw. The Quakers, as usual, fared well in the sprint events. Harper, in addition to his second-place finish in the 100, won the 200 in 21.3 seconds and was a member of Penn's winning 4x100 and 4x400 relay teams. Armstrong won the 400 in 48.8 and was followed closely by teammate Mike Stifler, who finished in 49.3. Carl Eklof had a top performance in winning the 110 high hurdles by one tenth of a second with a time of 14.6, while also finishing second in the 400-meter hurdles with a time of 55.0. Dave Rechtweg won the high jump with a height of 6-9 to go along with Shalev's third-place finish. Stifler came up big in the long jump, moving from fifth to second on his last jump by jumping a distance of 23-6.25. Fellow freshman Dave Davenport contributed a second-place long jump of 47-7.75 to round out Penn's scoring in the jumps. The real difference in the meet was the distance events, in which the Tigers distance runners completely dominated the Quakers. Princeton crushed Penn 25-3 in running events of 800 meters and longer. Princeton relied on its strength in distance events, and was led by all-American Scott Anderson, who won the 1,500 and 5,000. The meet served as another reminder that the Quakers have to perform at their best to defeat Princeton. Nathan Taylor believes only 50 percent of the team performed at the level at which it is capable, which wasn't enough to overcome a Princeton team that had an almost perfect meet. "Each of us has to look at ourselves and see if we did as well as we could," Armstrong said. The Heptagonals take on even greater importance now. The Quakers are determined to defeat the Tigers, and are coming increasingly closer with every meet. But as the scores get closer, the defeats become more painful. Penn's job will not come any easier at Heps. While the Quakers had trouble with Princeton in a tri-meet, at Heps there will be nine teams competing. Time is running out on the Quakers, but they realize that a win at Heps is within their reach. "They will go in to Heps with fire in their eyes," Taylor said.