With Heps approaching and two vets out, M. X-C has one final tune-up

Week in and week out, Penn cross country runners toil in obscurity, focusing on season-ending races that seem far, far away. But finally, those races are almost here. Coming off an educational, if not wholly successful, effort at the Paul Short Invitational at Lehigh last weekend, the Penn men's cross country team enters this week's National Invitational at Penn State with a diverse set of goals. The primary goal for this Saturday's meet is to get in one more solid race before the Heptagonal Championship on November 1. Competing without captain Matt Wilkinson and veteran Ross Albert -- both out due to illness -- the Quakers were forced to look to different team members to take up leadership at the Paul Short Invite. Two other veterans, Paolo Frescura and Aaron McCommons, filled the void admirably in leading Penn to a 13th-place finish in the field of 30 teams. "It was a very good meet," Penn coach Charlie Powell said. "The guys had to race for themselves instead of gauging themselves off of [Wilkinson and Albert]." Villanova, William & Mary and Penn State swept the top three places, but it was Yale's fourth-place finish that is of most interest to Penn. As Heps draw closer, the Quakers are beginning to compare their own times to those run by rival Ivy League schools. Yale and Navy, which also competes at Heps along with Army, have already beaten the Quakers in head-to-head competition, and Princeton has also shown that it will field a strong team. "You start putting [times] together and see who does what where," Powell said. "Now is the one time of the year that you do look at other schools. Now is the key time." Due to various injuries and illnesses, Penn has yet to receive good races from all of its runners on the same day. Saturday's field will give the Quakers one more chance to tune up for their season-ending meets. "We're still trying to improve," Wilkinson said. "We haven't had every guy hit on all cylinders. I'd like to see that happen. We still have a positive attitude." Missouri is expected to lead the competition, with Penn State and Cornell also challenging. There is also hope that the strong freshmen contingent on the team will recover from the difficult training weeks and pull out of a mid-season bout with fatigue. In the freshmen's first season of collegiate running, the long weekly mileage has made this a draining fall. "It's naturally tougher for them. They haven't done this before," Albert said. "[The upperclassmen] are used to this. In the middle, there's usually a lag everything should come back together." Although freshmen will play a prominent role in November's championship races, it is the veterans that are showing continued strength and improved results. In a break from earlier season results in which freshmen usually finished among the top three for Penn, the four fastest runners in recent weeks have been juniors and seniors. "Upperclassmen are more used to the training," Wilkinson said. "We're responding and improving because we've all been through it before." As the Quakers enter the final critical weeks of the season, their chances of success rest with their ability to come together and all run fast on the same day -- something that has so far eluded this squad. "You only have a few opportunities," Powell said. "These are chances you can not pass up."

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