W. Track finishes disappointing fifth at Heptagonals

Princeton and Brown shared the title at the rain-soaked championship on May 9-10. For Penn hurdler Dawn McGee, the weekend of May 9-10 could have gone better. It could could have gone a lot better. Despite qualifying to the finals of the 100 meter high hurdles in the Heptagonal Championships at Brown, McGee finished a disappointing sixth in a slow time of 14.94 seconds. "It was my worst Heps performance since I've been here," McGee said. "I've always finished first or second and this time, I finished sixth. It was just a really bad weekend." Unfortunately for McGee and her women's track teammates, the Heps meet turned out to be a bad weekend for the entire team, as various misfortunes combined with poor performances to put the Quakers in fifth place with 80 points, 36 behind co-champions Brown and Princeton. "We only scored double-digit points in one event, and usually, we can get first and second place finishes in a few events," McGee said. The one Penn double-digit scorer was triple jumper Lisa El. El, who will be a senior in the fall, captured first place with a hop, skip and jump of 37'8.75", outdistancing second place Mary Moore of Cornell by three inches. "[The victory] was bittersweet, because it didn't help us win the meet or even place in the top three," El said. "And we really should have placed in the top three." "It is nice to contribute to the team, but it is difficult when your contribution doesn't mean much," she added. El, who has been battling stress fractures in her legs all season, will not not compete in this weekend's ECAC meet in order to rest for the team's trip to England next month. On June 15, several members of the Penn team will join a handful of Cornell runners in a competition against British teams. While El was battling her injury in the triple jump, one of her teammates developed an injury of her own. During one of her throws in the shot put competition, Mandy Bennett, who finished fifth in the shot at last year's Heps, broke her foot. Her broken foot not only prohibited Bennett from competing in the hammer throw and the discus, but it also kept her from scoring more points in the shot. If she had not fallen over the toe board when she broke her foot, Bennett's throw would have put her in third place. Instead, one of Bennett's previous throws garnered her sixth place. Although Bennett did not finish as high as possible, the shot put was actually one of the better events for Penn, as junior Luana Botelho's toss of 45'2.25" was good enough for second place. Botelho's finish allowed her to join El as the only Quakers on the All-Ivy team. The relays were another disappointment for the Quakers. They finished in third place in both the 4x100 and 4x400 meter relays and in last place in the 4x800, 19 seconds behind seventh-place Dartmouth. The 4x400 team finished in 3:52.0, well below the school record of 3:43.7 set earlier this year. The slower time can be attributed to the bad weather conditions in Brown Stadium and the Red and Blue's low morale at that time. "By the time the 4x400 race started, we were out of the running for a team title," Penn's Jen Roy said. "We were disappointed that we didn't make a better run at first place, though." The horrible conditions were also apparent in the 400 meters, a race in which Roy finished fourth while running on a track that contained almost two inches of water in the first lane. This Saturday, Penn will travel to George Mason for the ECAC Championships. McGee, who will run in the high hurdles, does not expect to have a repeat performance from Heps. Looking back at the Heps meet, McGee is probably not alone, as many of her teammates can perform better than they did two weeks ago.

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