No silver medal for W.X-C as Penn places 13th

In last weekend's Paul Short Invitational at Lehigh, the Penn women's cross country team failed to continue its silver medal streak. At this larger, more nationally diverse meet, the Quakers, who had placed second in their only two meets, fell behind first-place North Carolina State (32 points), and Ivy League competitors Cornell (fourth place, 185 points) and Brown (eighth place, 233 points). The Navy women, who are also in Penn's division, came in 10th, beating Penn by 123 points. Scoring 386 points, Penn placed 13th, with the same runners from the Wolf & Kettle Cross Country Invitational earning points for the Quakers. For the third time, junior Rita Garber led Penn, coming in 31st with a time of 18 minutes, 27.7 seconds. Senior captain Kristen Duyck (18:50.7), freshman Kim Winslow (19:07.2), senior Kristen Gregory (19:23.1) and freshman Meredith Rossner (19:41.6) rounded out the point scorers, placing 57th, 83rd, 97th and 118th, respectively. In the past three meets, four runners have consistently remained within Penn's top five earning points for the team, two upperclassmen, Garber and Duyck and two freshman, Winslow and Rossner. Sophomore Leanne Shears participated in the junior varsity race at Lehigh, coming in 23rd with a time of 19:37.8 -- 8.8 seconds faster than Penn's fifth varsity runner. Most of the Penn women cut seconds off their times, but the top two Penn women, Garber and Duyck, were able to lower their times considerably, each cutting over 25 seconds owning to their experience and the nature of the course. "I have been running this course since my freshman year and I like this course a lot," Duyck said. "It has more rolling hills so it is usually a pretty fast course." Penn's 13th-place finish was not surprising. "We had pretty high expectations going in," Garber said. "We didn't have a bad meet, but I don't think we realized our full potential yet. I think we still have yet to do that in a meet where all of us come together and have a good day? that hasn't happened yet." "We had hoped that we would do the same or better than last year," Duyck said. "We ended up doing the same, 13th out of 30 schools last year and 29 schools this year. The coaches wanted basically the same thing, same as last year or better? that at least three people would break 19 [minutes]. Two of us did and the third one was just over so they were pretty happy." Penn continues to train through these meets with their final goal being the Heptagonal Championships at the end of October. But the women have less than a month, and only two meets, to prepare themselves to once again meet Cornell, Brown and the other Ivies at the divisional finals.