M. X-C runs to seventh at Heps

Matt Wilkinson finishedMatt Wilkinson finishedseventh individually inMatt Wilkinson finishedseventh individually inthe 58th Heptagonals. Sometimes seven isn't such a lucky number. The 58th edition of the Heptagonal Championship featured fierce competition last Friday at Van Cortlandt Park in New York, resulting in a seventh-place finish for the Penn men's cross country team and a seventh-place individual finish for senior team captain Matt Wilkinson. With its top runners finishing first and second overall, Navy captured the championship, barely squeezing by both Princeton and Brown. Only nine points separated the top three teams. The Midshipmen's Jonathan Clemens outran his teammate by four seconds to capture the individual title in 24 minutes, 42 seconds. Improving from its ninth-place finish a year ago, Penn scored 174 points to finish ahead of Columbia and Harvard. Despite hoping to finish a couple places higher, the Quakers were mostly content with their effort. "We thought it was good, but not perfect," Penn freshman Joe Campagna said. "It was a vast improvement over last year. Even though we were seventh, we were only 40 points from fifth, so things were pretty close." This year's race was highlighted by favorable weather conditions and an evenly matched field. A single minute was the difference between a top 20 individual finish and a bottom 20 result. Additionally, the top seven runners all finished well ahead of last year's winning time of 25:12. "The crazy thing is everyone is really good," Quakers coach Charlie Powell said. "There's a section where almost every second is equal to a place. The 17th-place finisher ran about 25:30, and the 55th guy finished in 26:30. We try to focus on the positive, though. We don't want to sit around and pick the race apart. Saying that you could have picked a guy or two off only makes you want to be bitter." Wilkinson turned in a top-rate performance for Penn, which continued to struggle with its consistency. Running the eighth-fastest Heps time in Quakers history, his time over the five-mile course of 25:05 landed him in seventh-place overall. Seven, coincidentally, takes on an even greater significance than that. His time would have won last year's championships by seven seconds. "I'm not frustrated at all," Wilkinson said. "You can't compare between races and from year to year." Despite their inability to put the perfect race together this year, the Quakers feel that they will have greater success in upcoming seasons. While many of Penn's rivals will graduate key portions of their teams this spring, eight of Penn's top nine runners will return for the 1997 season. "We are one of the youngest teams in the league," Powell said. "We are looking fairly decent for years to come. We are making small steps forward. I think a lot of them came away saying that we can move up in the future."

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