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By Adam Eveloff After watching her teammates crush Princeton and Yale last weekend at Franklin Field, sophomore Bassey Adjah is ready to get in on the fun. When the Penn women's track team travels to Ithaca, N.Y., to take on Cornell in another Ivy League showdown on Saturday, Adjah will attempt to return to competition for the first time in two weeks. Adjah suffered a strained quadricep while warming up during the University of Pennsylvania Invitational on April 4 in what she called "a freak injury." During the first week following her injury, Adjah treated her leg with plenty of rest and did not practice with the rest of the Quakers, but last week she began to slowly put more and more pressure on her tender muscle. Adjah increased the intensity of her workouts each day depending on how her leg reacted to the stress. "I feel like I am at 95 percent right now," Adjah said. "There is still room for improvement but I feel like I am getting there and should be ready to go against Cornell. The biggest thing I am worried about is what kind of shape I'm in after being out of competition for the last two weeks." Whatever fears Adjah might have, she will definitely have to face them on Saturday. Adjah is not taking things lightly as she attempts to jump back into competition at full throttle. At Cornell, she anticipates participating in the long jump, the 100- and 400-meter hurdles and the 4x400-meter relay. Of course, this all depends on how her muscle reacts to the strain of competition. Fortunately for Adjah, she will have her Penn teammates to rely on, which is important because, according to assistant coach Tony Tenisci, it will take a total team effort to beat Cornell. While it is sometimes possible for Penn to rely on the jumpers, runners or throwers to carry them to victory, the balanced attack of the Big Red means that the Quakers will have to be ready to perform their best in every aspect of the meet. "There is not one particular group that is going to do it all," Adjah said. "Everyone has to perform. Everyone cannot look at one group to pull us through. Everyone has to come together. That's what a team is." The team will be looking to its usual scorers, like senior captains Rita Garber and Luana Botelho, to tally plenty of points on Saturday. The recent success of sophomore JaJuan Gair and senior Victoria Moore in the hurdles and 400 meters, respectively, will also have to continue in order for the Quakers to have a chance to win. "Of all the teams we've faced, we're probably most evenly matched with [Cornell]," Tenisci said. "We are reflections of one another in the strengths of our teams. It's going to be very interesting to see how it goes. It's going to be a very challenging meet for us because they have a very balanced team like us." Cornell's toughness also means that Penn will need some new faces to turn in big performances if the Quakers hope to tip the scales in their own favor. One such athlete for Penn could be jumper Jill Aronovitz. The sophomore believes that the hard work she has put in at practice the past few weeks will pay off on Saturday. "I'm expecting a personal best for the season this weekend," Aronovitz said. "I really have not been living up to my potential lately. I feel like every meet I really haven't been showing what I have done in practice. I need to go above and beyond that and just explode." While some Quakers are pointing to the team's second-place finish -- one better than Cornell -- at the University of Pennsylvania Invitational as a sign that this should be an easy victory, everyone realizes the importance of the meet. Penn knows that it cannot let up now as it heads into the stretch run of its season with so much on the line.

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