One race decides league season for M. X-Country

A heptagon has seven sides. The Heptagonal Cross Country Championships include nine teams -- the eight members of the Ivy League plus Navy. The unpredictability doesn't stop there. When the Quakers reach the starting line of the hallowed course at Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx tomorrow, they will find a field of nine teams and 81 runners. There are no clear-cut individual favorites, and a victory by any one of many solid teams would come as no surprise either. "I don't know if I've seen a year like this," Penn coach Charlie Powell said. "Any one of five or six teams can win the race." The Red and Blue have not yet had a race this season where each of its top five members have excelled. Still, the Quakers beat Navy at the Paul Short Invitational and Columbia at the Delaware Invitational. The team clearly has the talent to win the meet. "I can seriously see us coming in anywhere from first to seventh," sophomore Bryan Kovalsky said. Princeton and Dartmouth are the highest ranked teams going into Friday's race. The most recent NCAA coaches poll gives the Big Green a No. 22 ranking, while the runners from Old Nassau are No. 23 in the nation. Dartmouth is still feeding off the momentum it gained from a second-place finish at the New England Championships on October 16. Confidence also reigns with the Tigers, who won the IC4A meet on the same day. "I think we have some things to prove," Penn junior captain Scott Clayton said. "We have to show that beating Navy and Columbia wasn't a fluke. We have to show we can beat Brown, and then we can aim at Princeton and Dartmouth." On an individual level, any one of the Quakers top three has a very realistic chance to win Friday's race. "If all three of us [Sean MacMillan, Clayton and Kovalsky] run our races, there's no reason why we can't all be in the top ten," Clayton said. The Penn runner with the best chance to emerge victorious on Friday is MacMillan. The junior has been the team's top finisher in each of the season's five previous races. On multiple occasions MacMillan has outstripped the swiftest competitors the Ivies and Navy can offer. Although Dartmouth handily defeated the Quakers at the Penn State Invitational on October 10, MacMillan finished ahead of every Big Green entry. He was third overall, navigating the 5.2 mile course in 25:58. In a similar fashion, Princeton finished fifth at Paul Short, seven places above Penn. Once again, however, MacMillan outperformed every runner from other Heptagonal schools. He finished 20th with a fantastic time of 24:20. The best a Princeton runner could do was 26th. But injuries and minor illnesses have pestered the Quakers the past few weeks. "Just being healthy is going to have a lot to do with how we come together as a team," Powell said. A solid fifth man was conspicuously absent from the Oregon Invitational on October 17. Freshman Matt Gioffre and junior Mark Granshaw, the usual fourth and fifth men, were not at full strength that day. Granshaw had stomach pain, and Gioffre had a staph infection. "I'm feeling fine right now," Gioffre said. "I'm excited about the race." Gioffre and Granshaw appear poised to perform, and junior Jason Greene's ankle is reported to have healed nicely. But the Quakers are not yet totally out of the woods. For the past two days, the health of MacMillan has come into question. He began to experience symptoms on Tuesday and was unable to practice on Wednesday. "He's just not feeling well right now," Powell said. "You have to let it run its course." Kovalsky, who had complained of pain in his shins earlier this week, claimed on Wednesday to be running well. In a race such as Heps, where many of the teams are familiar with one another, strategy becomes imperative. "I've talked with our guys about how we're going to run," Powell said. "And they all have their own ideas." It is likely that the Penn top three will not run side-by-side throughout the race. They each have an idea of how to proceed. Watch for MacMillan to attempt to go out at sub-4:40 [per mile] pace. "They all know the course really well, so they already have good ideas about where they want to make their moves," Powell said. The trails in the Bronx will be one constant in the race. Much of the rest is still up in the air.