Garber races for individual title at Heps

Every place will count this weekend for women's cross country. Tomorrow the Heptagonal Championships, known as Heps to most runners, will take place at Van Cortland Park in New York. The Quakers will face Navy and all seven of their Ivy League rivals in the only race that counts toward league standings. While the team will not challenge for the title, Penn captain Rita Garber has a fine chance of placing in the top five and gaining All-League honors. Faced with similar competition at the ECAC Championships two weeks ago, only Yale's Ariana Kelly and Cornell's Emily Germano finished ahead of her. Garber's season boasts four top-five finishes out of five races -- including winning her first collegiate cross-country race September 19 at the Delaware Invitational -- so it would be no surprise if Garber leaves almost every other runner behind. "Rita belongs at the top. She exemplifies that quality now," Penn assistant coach Tony Tenisci said. "All she has to do is run her race the way she has run all season." In the team competition, the top few spots are out of reach for the Quakers. Dartmouth, Cornell, Brown and Princeton are all in the hunt for the championship. The Quakers meanwhile will focus on Columbia, Yale, Harvard and Navy. Two weeks ago, Penn placed ninth out of twelve teams in the ECAC Championships at the same course. The team also finished behind four of the schools (Cornell, Princeton, Navy and Yale) that it will be meeting this weekend. Junior Stephanie Bell, who finished 10th overall at the Rutgers Invitational, will join Garber in leading the Quakers. Of the nine women running for Penn, only the top five count in the team's score. The remaining four runners will still play a factor by taking places away from their rivals' scorers. Although the Quakers are not looking for the championship title, they will be placed in a similar situation where each runner's place is important. "Every team has a solid number one and two. It is the other places that matter. We cannot have such a big difference between our third and fifth runners," Tenisci said. "One or two people can make a huge difference. They really need to tighten it up." The Quakers have experience with this type of close finishes. In 1990, Penn won its first ever cross-country Heptagonal Championships by only three points. "We want to pull together as a team and give a strong performance against the other Ivy League schools," Garber said. With two weeks off since ECACs, the team is rested and ready to go. This weekend their fate is in their own feet.