W. Track at Princeton for last hurrah before Heptagonals

"Priiiinceton, Priiiinceton, You Suck!!!" will not be heard this weekend in New Jersey, as Penn's women's track team plans to let its performance do the talking at Princeton. The Quakers travel to Princeton, N.J., for tomorrow's noon showdown with the hated Tigers. "For us it's a real big deal," Penn assistant coach Tony Tenisci said. "Not only are we trying to get good quality seed times for the conference championships, but this is our archrival, our philosophical rival, and they're the ones that we go at." Last year, the Tigers defeated the Quakers 68-50 at the dual meet and went on to win the Heptagonal Championships, at which Penn finished third. The Princeton dual meet fall later on the schedule this year, making it the Quakers' last meet before Heptagonals, the conference championship for the eight Ivy League schools and Navy. "You want to have a great meet going into Heps so that you can feel confident competing at a high level at a big important meet," Tenisci said. The Red and Blue will have a week off before heading to Ithaca, N.Y., for Heps, making it doubly important to perform well at Princeton. "It's one of the best duals anywhere," Tenisci said. "Head to head, one shot for everything, so it's exciting, it's nerve-wracking as heck. It'll go back and forth, but usually the relays decide it." The relays are often the deciding factor at this meet because of the way they are scored. The winning team earns five points while the losing side gets nothing. It is precisely this winner-take-all scoring method that gives Penn a great chance tomorrow. "We do have good relay teams, but so do they," Tenisci said. "So we don't really know." Sophomore JaJuan Gair is on one of those all-important relay teams, the 4x400, but she also has her individual events -- the 55-meter high hurdles and the 55-meter dash -- to think about. "In practice I've really been working on getting off to a good start, especially in the hurdles, where the key thing is timing and steps between the hurdles," Gair said. "My goals for the meet are to win the hurdles, place top three in the dash and get a good seed time for Heps in the relay." Gair isn't the only one splitting time between gearing up for Princeton, and looking ahead to Heps. Senior thrower Mandy Bennett won't have much competition this weekend, literally. "My goal is personally to throw well, because Princeton has only one thrower and she doesn't even do the weight, which is my main event," Bennett said. Bennett will be competing in the weight throw against only her teammates and herself, but she will have to face that pesky Princeton thrower in the shot. "I'm just hoping to throw around 41 or 42 feet. In practice I've mainly been working on technique in both my events and looking ahead to Heps in the weight," Bennett said. Sophomore pole vaulter Ami Desai is looking beyond not only this weekend, but beyond Heps as well. "I'm shooting for ECACs," Desai said, speaking of the tournament that qualifies athletes for nationals. Women's pole vault, a relatively new event, is not a scoring event at Princeton and is an exhibition at Heps. Thus, Desai is concentrating on improving her personal record of 11 feet and getting used to some new equipment. "I've been working on using a bigger pole, which, naturally will get me better heights," she said. As for the Princeton meet, Desai is confident. "After last week, everyone wants to get out there and do well," Desai said. "It's like, Princeton's coming up, lets show them what we can do." Bennett hopes to show up the rival Tigers, too. "[We're] really excited to take on Princeton, of course, next to Heps it's the biggest meet of the season," Bennett said. "Also, all the seniors, we obviously want to go out with a victory at Princeton."