Without Belsley, W. X-C struggles

The women's cross country team posted a mediocre performance Saturday at the Paul Short Memorial Run at Lehigh, finishing 10th out of 28 teams. The meet, which was held on the same course as last year's Nationals, was the largest and most competitive race in which the Quakers have competed this year. Powerhouse Providence took home first place. Mary Conway led the Penn effort with a time of 18 minutes, 53 seconds, which was good for a 35th-place finish out of 196 runners. Melanie Gesker (45th), Christine Stavalone (54th), Kristin Duyck (84th) and Kirsten Gregory (109th) also scored for the Quakers. "We didn't run up to our expectations. It wasn't our best showing," Conway said. "No one is running where they should be right now." Gesker concurred: "The individual times were mostly mediocre?.It wasn't a bad performance, but it certainly wasn't great." Penn was forced to run the race without its top runner, junior Michelle Belsley, who was struck by a car after practice last Thursday and sustained minor injuries to her hip flexor and inner quad muscles. Belsley, who coincidentally also missed last year's Paul Short Memorial after having her foot run over by a car, considered the course to be one of her favorites and was "very disappointed" at missing the race for the second consecutive year. Belsley had won the two meets prior to Saturday's meet and was primed to break 18 minutes and finish in the top 10. "I think [the runners] have so much left in them," Penn assistant Tony Tenisci said. "They have so much potential and work so hard. They just need to make the commitment to tighten this team up so there's not such big separations between them during the race?.Our [times] need to be low, up front and close together. "They have to will their bodies to run as well as they possibly can on that given day. Five people have got to race well and make that commitment. It is a unit of five running as one?.They have to race until they drop." The Quakers will race again on the same Lehigh course Oct. 20 in their final warm-up before the Oct. 27 Heptagonal Championships. This time, however, the race will be just over two miles, which is a much shorter distance than Saturday's was. Belsley, whose health is crucial to the Quakers' success, ran some in practice yesterday and should be fully recovered by the Lehigh race. "If the injury had to happen, I'm glad it happened when it did," Tenisci said. "It would have been devastating if we had lost her prior to Heps."