V-ball takes streak to Navy

Having won five in a row,Having won five in a row,Penn visits Annapolis toHaving won five in a row,Penn visits Annapolis toface Army and Navy. Most athletic teams have only one season per year. This year, Penn's volleyball team is having two. The first season ended on October 23 with a heartbreaking loss to Princeton. The second has seen the Quakers post a 5-0 record as they set their eyes on the Ivy League championship. Officially the two seasons are one and the same. But in the minds of the Penn players, they are quite distinct. "We've put our heads together and fixed what we were doing wrong," Penn middle blocker Jennifer Law said. "We have a new outlook on things." The loss to rival Princeton was all the impetus the Quakers needed to reevaluate their situation. "I think it made us take a step back and take a look at what was going to happen if we didn't start playing like the team that we can play like," Law said. The 17 games leading up to that loss weren't really all that bad. The Quakers had a respectable 10-7 record. But the general feeling among the players was that the team was not living up to its potential. Penn lost to a mediocre Brown squad one weekend at the Palestra and then rebounded to beat Harvard, which was then undefeated in the Ivies. "I think we're working hard on not being the roller coaster team that we were," senior co-captain Karen Kinsherf said. "We're not going up and down, but just playing consistently and staying in games." Since the Princeton loss, Penn has won five matches in a row, including three in straight games at the Marist Invitational. The Quakers appear to have become a cohesive unit, with one player always ready to pick up the slack for another. "We're still the same players that we were before," Law said. "Our mental game has just picked up that much more. We've just become a team -- six players play as one." Penn coach Margaret Feeney has clearly noticed a change in her players since that loss to the Tigers. "I think they have gotten tougher," Feeney said. "That's going to be important in the next couple of weeks." This weekend, the Quakers try to maintain their undefeated "second season". Today, in Annapolis, Md., Penn takes on Army (7-22) and Navy (11-17). Tomorrow, the Quakers return to the Palestra to face Hofstra in their final home game of the season. The Army squad is struggling, having dropped its last five matches. Navy, on the other hand, is on the rebound since its straight-game loss to Penn two weeks ago. This weekend will see the rare rubber match for Penn as the Quakers face Navy for the third time this season after splitting the first two meetings. Feeney hopes to use the weekend to gear her team up for the Ivy League tournament, which looms only one week away. "We want to have another weekend to fine tune things. We're still working a lot of kinks out of our game," Feeney said. "We're trying to get stronger offensively and make sure we're making good, aggressive decisions." Added junior setter Heather Tillett: "We're viewing this weekend as a good practice. There's not really a lot of pressure. We're really excited to be able to go out and be aggressive and try new things that we're going to be able to use against the Ivy teams next weekend." If the Quakers need any additional motivation over the weekend, they can remember that they have an "undefeated" record to protect.