M.X-Country races in Penn State Invite

It's very tough to beat an opponent that you can't see. The Penn men's cross-country team ran into just such a problem this past Saturday at the Paul Short Invitational. The huge field of nearly 300 varsity runners prevented the Quakers from zeroing in on rival teams. "With 42 teams in the race, you have a hard time knowing who it is that's running in front of you," Penn coach Charlie Powell said. "There must have been four teams with gold jerseys, and there must have been at least a dozen teams with white jerseys. When you're behind a guy, you don't know where he's from." This coming Saturday promises to present a decidedly different set of conditions. The Quakers will travel to State College, Pa., to race against a much more manageable field of 10 other teams in the Penn State Invitational. "We're going out on Saturday to race against Navy and Dartmouth," junior standout Sean MacMillan said. "We can really see what we've got." The Penn runners eagerly anticipate Saturday's meeting with Dartmouth. In the most recent NCAA coaches' poll, Dartmouth ranked 29th, two spaces behind Heptagonal leader Princeton. The Quakers have not yet seen the Big Green in action this season, but confidence rides high. "We're aiming for Dartmouth. We know that we have enough to beat them," sophomore Bryan Kovalsky said. While Penn hasn't seen Dartmouth, The Red and the Blue have so far only seen Navy from behind. The Midshipmen edged out Penn on their own course at the Navy Quadrangle in Annapolis, Md., September 12 and handily defeated the Quakers this past Saturday, 212-280. "We've raced Navy a bunch of times now and we have a good idea of where our guys should be in relation to them," MacMillan said. Navy boasts no dominant runners. Last weekend, MacMillan's 20th place finish was seven spots higher than any Navy runner. If the Quakers are able to string together a performance in which at least three other runners excel, a victory over the team from Annapolis is well within reach. MacMillan, who has paced the Quakers in every meet thus far, also has some individual concerns this weekend. He has hopes of securing an individual bid to the national championship and needs to start setting his sights at his individual competition. "There's a guy named [Steve] Bohan from West Virginia who was right ahead of me last week. I need to keep an eye on guys like him," MacMillan said. On Tuesday, most of the squad ran a series of four one-mile runs with a 100-meter jog-rest in between. The brisk pace of those miles may signal that the Quakers are discovering fresh legs in early October. For example, MacMillan's four miles were all under 4:40. "We're right where we want to be. I'd say we're almost perfect training-wise," Powell said. The schedule for the week has been challenging but not overly grueling. Monday saw the Quakers log 14 miles at a moderate, steady pace. Wednesday's practice was a quick six miles. The course at Penn State will be the longest the Quakers have faced this season. Rather than the customary five-mile distance, the course in Happy Valley will take the 11 regional teams along 5.2 miles. "That's not really going to make a difference. The times will just be a little higher," Powell said. If the weather forecast holds up for Saturday, Penn's times promise to be markedly faster than the last time the Quakers traveled to State College. The last time the Quakers visited Penn State, Nov. 15, 1997, they raced in the regional championship. When they arrived that morning, they found a course blanketed in three inches of snow. As a result, the race was a sloppy mess and no times were up to snuff. "I guarantee our times will be faster than that meet," Powell said. That guarantee will be easy to meet, but it will take much more than that to outstrip Navy and Dartmouth on Saturday.