Belsley wins again

After coming up short in its first three meets, the women's cross country team finally found gold Saturday at Lafayette. The Quakers won their first meet of the season with a total of 33 points, defeating second-place Moravian by 10 points and third-place Lehigh by a whopping 93 points. "We all went out pretty aggressively and were able to maintain focus throughout the race," co-captain Melanie Gesker said. "We're going to use this as a momentum-builder." Junior Michelle Belsley, who won at Rutgers one week ago, continued her incredible hot streak by posting a first-place time of 18 minutes, 19 seconds. The time is the fastest any Penn woman has ever posted on the difficult Lafayette course. "Michelle Belsley is running out of her mind," assistant coach Tony Tenisci said. "She has really taken herself to a very prestigious level and is running very, very well. The 18:19 on that course is just phenomenal for this time of year, and we're very impressed with her." Also scoring for Penn were Gesker (4th place), senior co-captain Mary Conway (7th), and sophomores Christine Stavalone (8th) and Kirsten Gregory (14th). For the most part, the Red and the Blue dominated the 11-team meet from start to finish. "As a team, this is a big confidence-booster," Conway said. "We ran better as a team than we did before -- it's the first meet where we saw that we could really run together." Belsley concurred: "I'm very excited for the team?.The fact that we won the meet shows that running together really works. When you look for other girls from your team during the race, it makes it more fun and also allows you to pass the [key runners] from other schools." This Saturday, the Quakers run in the Paul Short Memorial Run at Lehigh. The race, which will feature nationally-ranked Villanova and Providence, will include nearly every major East Coast team. While Penn is a long-shot to win the meet, much is riding on its performance in the race. Belsley, who considers the course one of her favorites, could potentially break 18 minutes for the first time this season while running alongside numerous all-Americans. Also, Penn will have the opportunity to run against most of its Ivy League competition for the first time this year. If Belsley and the rest of the Quakers can put up a strong showing, it will establish Penn as the team to beat in the season-ending Heptagonal Championships.

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