Belsley wins at Rutgers

Apparently, Michelle Belsley made up her mind Saturday that she was healthy and ready to run. Not only did Belsley run in Saturday's Rutgers Invitational, but she smoked all the competition on her way to a first-place finish and a time of 18 minutes, 5 seconds. Christine Stavalone, Mary Conway, Kirsten Gregory and Melanie Gesker also scored points for the Quakers, who finished second out of seven teams with 51 points. Host Rutgers emerged victorious in the meet. Belsley's extraordinary performance comes only one week after she was forced to miss the Princeton Invitational with cramps in her legs. "It wasn't really a major injury," Belsley said. "It was just something that was difficult to run with. I felt good coming into Saturday's race." Belsley, who dominated the race from start to finish, is the first Quaker runner to win the Rutgers Invitational since all-American Chris Lundey won the meet four years ago. Penn coaches Betty Costanza and Tony Tenisci decided to nominate Belsley for Penn Athlete of the Week honors after the meet. "It was definitely a half-miler's course," Belsley said. "It was all rolling hills and that suits my running style well. I only wish that I had had somebody else running with me?it's hard to run 3.1 miles by yourself. I think I could have broken 18 minutes if somebody had been running with me. "Before the race, we were planning on having a pack of us running together at the front. Unfortunately, that didn't happen?.It's always more fun to run with your teammates, and hopefully this weekend we'll be able to do that. We're a very close team and we're only going to improve." Penn will be running at Lafayette this Saturday, and the Quakers are hoping to regain some of their freshness this week in practice. "Even though we've been running pretty consistently, we were hoping to beat Rutgers on Saturday," Gesker said. "We had some very hard workouts and some people were tired. Practices should ease up this week."