W.X-Country looking for leader to emerge

But now Garber has graduated, leaving the Quakers to run last Saturday's Lafayette Invitational without the crutch of their departed front-runner. It quickly became apparent that the confidence Penn showed last year under Garber's guidance had vanished. A year after finishing fourth, the team hesitantly navigated the five-kilometer course to a disastrous ninth-place finish at the 11-team meet. "Sometimes teams can become a little too dependent on a front-runner," Penn sophomore Susan Cook said. "This year we don't have that security." But the Quakers ran like they had that security on Saturday. Timidly. Waiting for something to happen. And it doomed them. So does Penn need a front-runner in the mold of Garber? "Not if you can get everyone running decent times together," sophomore Katie Henderson said. "But it would be nice to have someone out front." So who can replace Garber at the front of the pack? Junior captain Meredith Rossner has the ability. She finished first among the six Penn competitors on Saturday, improving from 25th place last year to 21st place this year. Cook and Henderson certainly have the potential. They both had promising freshman seasons but each turned in a disappointing finish at Lafayette. Senior Stephanie Bell made a monumental rise last season from sixth on the team in the first race to second behind Garber. But she missed Saturday's meet with bronchitis. The lone freshman on the team, Lauren Avallone, started her college career off on the right foot, finishing 39th on Saturday. Still, the Quakers need more than just Avallone to run well. Otherwise, the team will only entrench itself further in the basement of the league. Even with Garber leading the way last season, Penn finished last in the nine-team Heptagonals. They had finished eighth the two previous seasons. "Cross country in the last three years has been a disappointment for me," Penn coach Betty Costanza said. "This team has the ability to take us out of the hole." But do they have the desire? "I don't know." The Quakers, by their own admission, did not show the gritty, underdog determination they needed to on Saturday. "We all kind of ran comfortable races," Rossner said. "No one really went out there and killed themselves like you need to do to do well." But the team seems to have responded to the disappointment this week. "We're taking it a little bit more seriously," Avallone said. And that seriousness may propel the Quakers out of the hole they dug for themselves. Atonement could be quick if Penn turns in a repeat of last year's performance at the Delaware Invitational this Saturday in Newark, Del. Last September, Penn finished second behind Columbia. And Henderson, Bell and Cook -- who all finished in the top 15 -- will compete on Saturday. But Penn could not have finished as high as it did without its ace runner, first-place finisher Rita Garber. Yesterday, the Quakers ran four one-mile intervals at Belmont Park, with the top runners finishing each around six minutes. If one of the runners can string together just three of those six-minute miles on Saturday, Costanza will have found a replacement for Garber -- someone the team can ride out of the basement.