W.X-C places eighth in Heptagonals tune-up

The ECACs were held at Van Cortlandt Park in New York, the same course as Heptagonals in two weeks. Coming into the this weekend's ECAC Championships at Van Cortlandt Park, the Penn women's cross country team was given an unexpected glimpse of what they will have to face in the all too near future. Senior captain Kristen Duyck expressed the team's confusion about which schools would be represented at the meet. She explained that the Quakers were not expecting the added competition of the other Ivy representatives. With the Quakers placing eighth -- falling behind three Ivy powerhouses -- Penn sees it has its work cut out for it when it faces the entire Ivy League at the October 31 Heptagonal Championships, also being held on the Bronx, N.Y. course. Penn's runners earned 213 points, but were still no match for the top three Ivy teams who swept the medals. Penn fell behind first-place Yale (64 points), a team the Quakers beat by five points on the same course in the beginning of September at the Fordham Invitational. The Red and Blue were also unable to defeat second-place Princeton (89) and third-place Cornell (98). The eighth-place finish, however, was right in the middle of the 15-team pack, featuring runners from 11 other East Coast squads. At 18 minutes, 47.9 seconds, junior Rita Garber was the first Quaker to cross the finish line, placing 23rd overall. Duyck (19:00.5) also earned valuable points for Penn, coming in 35th. Also putting points on the scoreboard were freshman Kim Winslow (19:14.3, 46th), sophomore Leanne Shear (19:21.7, 52nd) and freshman Jessica Hulse (19:30.5, 57th). Both of Penn's lead runners, Garber and Duyck, managed to shave over 20 seconds from their times since their September appearance on the course. Shear once again made a great showing for Penn, breaking into the team's top five, having just come up from the junior varsity team one meet ago. "We weren't really sure what to expect coming in," Duyck said. "We weren't expecting as many teams." "We had hoped to do a little bit better," concluded Duyck. "There were a few of us who performed really well. But not all of us were on at the same time, whereas the week before everyone was working together. So it was not that we were unhappy with some of the times, but at the same time, we had hoped to have run a little better." Penn is now winding down its season with its biggest meet coming up in less than two weeks. Still after this weekend's foretelling of what to expect at Heptagonals, Duyck still asserts,"We are going in optimistic."