Solid performances for W. Track at ECACs

The Penn women's track team turned in a strong 14th-place ECAC finish. "Pleasantly surprised." That's how senior Rita Garber, a Penn women's track co-captain, described the team's reaction to its 14th-place finish out of 43 teams at the ECACs in Boston last weekend. Despite having only nine ECAC qualifiers, the Quakers finished with 17.5 points, 1 1/2 points behind 13th place James Madison and a half point in front of Northeastern University. One Quakers qualifier, sophomore hurdler JaJuan Gair, traveled to Boston with the team but was a late scratch, effectively cutting the Quakers roster to eight. "She had a slight problem with her quad," Penn assistant coach Tony Tenisci said. "We wanted to save her for the outdoor season because we already had our championship." Tenisci was referring to the fact that, for most of the teams at the meet, the ECACs are the conference championships. The Ivy League schools and Navy hold their championship, the Heptagonals, a week before ECACs. This means that most of the teams at the meet are trying to peak for ECACs, while the Quakers athletes should have already peaked the week before. But six of the other eight Quakers did score, propelling the team to its surprising finish. Penn scored twice in the pole vault, with sophomore Ami Desai placing second and garnering All-East honors and freshman Liz Wittels finishing seventh, one spot shy of the All-East team. The aforementioned Garber made the All-East team in the 3,000-meter run while shattering her personal record by five seconds. "I was happy that I was able to get my time down, but I'm not completely satisfied because qualifying for Nationals was at the back of my mind," said Garber, who finished just a few seconds off the NCAA provisional qualifying time. "I'm disappointed that I didn't aim higher, but one step at a time I guess." The third Quaker to find a spot on the All-East team was senior Jessica Mitchell, who finished fifth in a close 800-meter race. Sophomore pentathlete Bassey Adjah also got in on the scoring, as she finished in eighth place, just shy of a personal record. "I know I could've done better," said Adjah, who placed seventh last year at ECACs but scored more points this year. "I did my best in my worst events and my worst in my best events." "We have a lot to be happy about," Tenisci said of the Quakers' finish. "They were all exhausted against top competition that was peaking. We're usually in that second tier [of schools], and we could've been even a little higher had Luana [Botelho] been healthy and Ruthie [Neuhaus]'s measurement come out right." Senior shot-putter Botelho, who was sick and hadn't been able to train well all week, finished in ninth place, just missing a scoring opportunity. But Botelho played down the extent to which her illness contributed to her less than ideal finish. "I wasn't feeling well, but that's no excuse," the Penn co-captain said. "It was very frustrating, you go in expecting more, and I should've competed at a higher level and it didn't happen this weekend." The Quakers also just missed out on scoring when junior triple-jumper Neuhaus put her hands back on what would have been a scoring jump. She ended up in 10th place, two spots out of the money. Penn now turns its attention to the outdoor season, which begins when it hosts the Quaker Invitational on March 21.