W. Soccer ready to go against Cornell after full week's rest

Coming off an unexpected week-long lull after its morale-building victory over 1998 Ivy League champion Dartmouth last weekend, the Penn women's soccer team resumes Ivy League play at Rhodes Field Saturday at 2:30 p.m. against a young, but equally confident, Cornell squad. The Quakers (2-1-1, 1-0 Ivy League), who were scheduled to play a non-league match at home against George Mason Wednesday, had their mid-week plans snapped by the absence of the two required referees and the subsequent postponement of the game until October 18. The game's delay disappointed the Penn athletes, who had hoped that a Wednesday win against George Mason -- which beat then-No. 20 Tennessee last week to knock the Vols out of the top 25 -- would continue their Dartmouth-defeating momentum into the weekend match against the Big Red (0-1, 1-2-1). "I'm bummed because that was [going to be] a big game," Penn co-captain Jennifer Danielson said. "Hopefully we'll have our focus after our plans getting switched." Penn coach Andrew Nelson does not see the cancellation of the weekday match as a hindrance to his squad's focus on the Cornell game. If anything, he believes that missing the game actually helped the Quakers prepare mentally, increasing their intensity level for this weekend. "This is an Ivy League game -- it's a big game," he said. "I'm sure the girls are even more excited since they haven't played in a whole week." The Cornell squad is also excited for this weekend, but under different circumstances. The Big Red opened their Ivy League season Saturday by taking a 4-0 beating at the hands of Princeton, then lost 1-0 to No. 5 Penn State in Ithaca, N.Y., on Tuesday. Though the highly favored Nittany Lions did leave Cornell as the winners, the Big Red played a great game under steep odds. Cornell allowed just one goal on nine Penn State shots and threatened to equalize with shots of their own all the way into the 90th minute. "Penn State is a very big, athletic team and we held our own," Cornell coach Randy May said. "[Despite the loss] we've raised the bar against a team like Penn State and now we have to keep up to that level in the games beyond. It was another building block with our young team." This year's Cornell squad is definitely a young team. After losing three starters to graduation and a handful more for other reasons, May is forced to fill eight of his 11 starting spots with either freshmen or sophomores. This is in contrast to the two underclassmen -- freshman goalkeeper Katherine Hunt and sophomore midfielder Sarah Campbell -- that Nelson chooses to start for Penn. The big question for May is whether his team's inexperience will lead to difficulties in matching up with the veteran-rich Quakers. "We have young kids and some of these young kids respond to challenges in different ways," May said. "We have our backs against the wall [in the Ivy League] with our loss against Princeton. Against Penn we've got to find out where we are." The Quakers already know where they are: smack in the middle of an Ivy League championship race, tied at the head with Harvard, Princeton and Yale. And they know that tomorrow's game against the Big Red is Penn's next chance to prove that it deserves the Ivy title. While the Quakers have fielded a competitive squad over the past few years, the Ivy title has remained disappointingly out of reach. "I can't say we're on a roll but coming off Dartmouth we're pretty pumped," Danielson said. "Mentally, we'll be more ready because we know we have a good chance for the Ivy League title after beating Dartmouth. "The advantage is more in our favor."