School record broken as W. Track earns fourth

Despite carrying two individual Heptagonal champions and placing second and third in several events, the Penn women's track team was unable to acquire enough overall points to defend its title as Heptagonal champions this weekend at Harvard. With a final score of 80, the Quakers took fourth place behind Princeton, Cornell and Brown, who earned 114.67, 102 and 89.33 points, respectively. The eight Ivy League schools along with Navy competed in the meet. Going into Heps, Penn's athletes knew that they needed to accumulate points in the lower scoring positions as well as in the top three in order to win. By entering athletes in all but one of the weekend's events, the Quakers had hopes of accomplishing this goal. In the end, they came up short. The final team score of the meet by no means takes away from the outstanding performances of many individuals, particularly those who where victorious in their events. Penn senior co-captain Angie Jiminez won the pentathlon for the second year in a row, while sophomore Aqiyla Muhammed took first in the long jump. Jiminez also placed fifth in the long jump, and Muhammed took fifth in the triple jump. "We really couldn't have asked for anything more," Penn assistant coach Tony Tenisci said. "We rose for the occasion. We just didn't have the lucky breaks we needed in the lower scoring positions." A 10-year-old school record was broken by the team of Jessica Mitchell, Vicki Moore, Sonya Croswell and Jen Roy in the 1600-meter relay, as it finished in second place with a time of 3:48.88. Roy also finished second in the 400-meter run, as did Luana Botelho in the shot put and Dawn McGee in the 55-meter hurdles. Additionally, McGee took sixth in the 55-meter dash behind Penn's Christyna Faulkner. Two notable third-place finishers were Lisa El in the triple jump and the team of Stacey Yearwood, Stephanie Hunt, Adria Ferguson and Melanie Cafe in the 3,200-meter relay. "Our team had an excellent meet despite the standing in fourth place -- not perfect but really strong with some flashes of brilliance," Jiminez said. "We were disappointed not to place higher, but it was not because we rolled over -- several other teams just rose even higher. But we fought. There's nothing to be ashamed of." The Quakers knew from the beginning that everything would have to go perfectly for them to leave Cambridge victorious. Although several of Penn's athletes were nearly flawless in their individual events, the team as a whole needed a little more luck on its side.