Cross Country teams both finish last at Heps

The men's cross country team ran a disappointing race Friday at the Heptagonals, the conference championships held in New York, placing ninth out of nine teams. Dartmouth won the meet, followed by Navy, Brown and Princeton. The meet consisted of the eight Ivy League teams plus Navy. The Quakers did not perform up to expectations. When first asked about his team's performance Penn coach Charlie Powell was at a loss of words. "We're in great shape, we just?," he said. The young team had been hoping to peak at the end of the season after gaining Division I racing experience during the regular season. This was not the case. Junior captain Matt Wilkinson placed 12th, but the next Penn runner, sophomore Aaron McCommons, finished 54th. He was followed by John Blouin, Paolo Frescura and Paul Beliveau respectively. According to Powell, the problem was with momentum running. "It started going bad at a mile and a half into the race and just got worse," he said. "Cross country is not one of those sports that you can call a time out in and try to regroup. "The race is not indicative of the type of conditioning we do. This type of momentum racing has never hurt us before." Dartmouth won the race by placing four of its five runners in the top 11. Navy edged Brown out by one point. Going into the race Penn's Wilkinson had a good chance to earn all-Ivy honors. "We said that if he ran well he would be fourth or fifth, ran decent he would be 11th or 12th and if he ran poorly he would be 19th or 20th," said Powell. "He ran a decent race, but he knows he can do better than he did. Hopefully, he will perform better at the IC4As. He is learning how to be a front runner and it doing a great job at it." Looking toward the last race of the season, the IC4As, Powell mused, "Winning is never final and failure is never fatal." Hopefully, the Quakers will live up to these words at their final meet. The IC4As, the NCAA regional meet, is Nov. 11th at Franklin Park in Boston.