COLUMN: Summer crucial for Penn athletes

Rick Haggerty Commentary Rick Haggerty Commentary Summer vacation can be a very misleading term. Summer jobs are often just as or more demanding than classes. Students who are used to waking at ten or eleven o'clock in the morning for class must arrive at their jobs hours before then. Like most students, college athletes do not get a vacation from hard work when school is not in session. Summer training is crucial for success in the regular season, and many athletes at Penn are taking advantage of the summer to improve their games. Last month, when asked if his players would be playing in summer leagues, Penn baseball coach Bob Seddon said, "They better be playing. That is the only way to improve." Similarly, when asked if a tour of competition against club teams in England would aid her team this fall, Penn field hockey coach Val Cloud responded, "It better help." Seddon and Cloud understand the importance of year-round training. If players are not working out in June, July and August, they will not be successful when the season begins. While there will be no Quakers in the premier summer baseball leagues in Cape Cod or Alaska this year, most members of Seddon's squad will be playing baseball somewhere. Many will be in the Atlantic Coast Baseball League, including junior Sean McDonald, who is pitching for a team in West Deptford, N.J. McDonald's improvement this summer should greatly affect Penn's season in 1999. Coming off a year in which he tossed a no-hitter against Cornell, McDonald will become the staff ace next season, taking the place of recent grad Armen Simonian. Like McDonald and his teammates on the diamond, Penn hoopsters are taking full advantage of the summer months to improve. With the core of last year's team returning next season, the Penn men's basketball team is ready to take the Ivy title back from Princeton. Before the Red and Blue plays in front of a screaming crowd at the Palestra in February, however, they must spend countless hours on that floor, working on the skills that will excite the crowds in the winter. The Sonny Hill League is one of the premier summer basketball leagues in the nation, and the Penn basketball team is well represented among the squads in the Hank Gathers College Division. The Gathers Division features the top players from Philadelphia colleges as well as talented Philly natives. The competition is fierce, and the talent level of some of the players is well above what Penn sees in its Ivy League season. In addition to these league games, though, three Quakers are getting extra work by participating in selective workouts that include top players from the Gathers Division and the Baker League, the professional division of Sonny Hill. At a recent workout session, the Penn threesome of Michael Jordan, Matt Langel and Geoff Owens took on another trio in a pick-up three-on-three game. When the game was over, the Quakers had won by a score of 8-7. The team they had just defeated consisted of three former Temple standouts: Marc Jackson, Rick Brunson and NBA All-Star Eddie Jones. Granted, these former Owls may not have been playing with the competitiveness they may have had in the NCAA tournament or NBA playoffs, but the result is still promising for Penn fans. It is extremely unlikely that Princeton will have anyone with Jackson's size or Brunson's quickness to throw at the Quakers this year. And Brian Earl may be good, but he is no Eddie Jones. If and when the Ivy League championship is brought back to Philadelphia, the experience and skills gained in the summer workouts and Sonny Hill games will have much to do with it. While Jordan, Langel and Owens were competing against professional basketball stars, another Penn team was also getting experience against top competition. In England, where field hockey is taken very seriously by club teams, the Penn team was getting a taste of top level field hockey. "We were overmatched," Cloud said. "The level of hockey was exceptional." While the Red and Blue may not have been able to compete with these British club teams, just the experience will help them against Ivy foes in the fall. A squad with the talent of a top British club hockey team in the Ivy ranks is as unlikely as Eddie Jones showing up in a Columbia basketball uniform next winter. As the summer progresses, the work will continue, the games will continue and the improvement will continue. It is definitely summer for Penn athletes. But is it a vacation? For the sake of Penn sports fans, let's hope not.