M.X-C to battle Navy, Columbia

Coming off a solid second-place finish in its opening race of the year, the Penn men's cross country team will travel to Navy this Saturday in a tri-meet against the Midshipmen and Columbia. Leading the team is senior captain Matt Wilkinson, who finished first overall last week completing the five mile course in 26 minutes, 5 seconds. Wilkinson will be aided by an inexperienced, but talented group of freshman who performed well at their first collegiate meet. Last week the Quakers were satisfied by their second-place performance at the Towson St. Invitational, losing out to just the University of Maryland in an 11-team field. Most importantly, the team stuck to its pre-race goal of running as a pack. After Wilkinson, the next 11 Penn runners finished within 32 seconds of one another. "We accomplished what we set out to do which was to run as a pack," sophomore Matt Blodgett said. Since these meets do not actually count towards any post season qualifications, last week's meet was a chance for the team to practice a strategy that will likely prove successful by season's end. While running as a pack will again be a focus of Saturday's meet at Navy, the team members plan on putting a greater emphasis on winning. "We'll set out more for the win this week in addition to trying to run as a pack," Blodgett said. Much of the emphasis will also continue to revolve around the performance of the new freshman. Six of the top 10 Penn finishers were freshman. Penn's second- place finisher at Towson St. was freshman John Kroll, sixth overall in a time of 27 minutes. Since the Quakers are relying on the freshman to carry a large burden for the team, one may suspect that there would be a lot of pressure on them. However, Kroll said that this is not the case. "Coach hasn't put too much pressure on us," Kroll said. "He's done a good job helping us adjust." Freshman Sean Macmillan, who finished 11th overall at Towson St., said that having so many quality freshman runners made the adjustment to college running easier. "I expected to come out and do well, but having so many of us takes part of the pressure off," Macmillan said. This Saturday's race will be another opportunity for the men's cross country team to practice its pack-running strategy in competition. While the Quakers hope to defeat Navy and Columbia, they know that this race is really a preparation for more important races that will come later in the fall. "We want to be more aggressive," Wilkinson said. "Navy is going to want to take it out fast. We need to stay focused so we can be aggressive in the second half of the race."

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