Bassey Adjah, Ruthie Neuhaus and Liz Eittels finished highly in their respective events. The four members of the Penn women's track team who qualified for the ECAC Championships headed to Boston to take on some fierce competition in the final meet of the indoor season. Senior Ruthie Neuhaus, juniors Ami Desai and Bassey Adjah and sophomore Liz Wittels met the difficult qualifying standards in their events during the season to earn the right to compete in the prestigious meet. Neuhaus, Adjah and Wittels each took 10th place in their events. Desai came in 24th place in the pole vault. The previous weekend, Penn competed in the two-day Heptagonal Championships. Having the ECACs, the only other two-day event of the season, right after Heps undoubtedly left the Quakers athletes a little fatigued. "This was sort of like the calm after the storm," Penn assistant coach Tony Tenisci said. "Those girls all had great Heps, and it was really difficult to have to come back and compete in another two-day event the next weekend." Tenisci believes that mental rather than physical fatigue might have hurt the squad the most. "We definitely weren't as charged up and as energy-packed as for Heps," Tenisci said. "They were on the other side of their emotional peak, so it was very hard to get yourself motivated to try and gear up for another performance." Neuhaus, the only competing Penn senior, recorded a leap of 37'11.5" in the triple jump to place 10th, while Wittels turned in a jump of 10'11.75" for her 10th-place finish in the pole vault. Neuhaus might have placed higher in the event were it not for a botched landing on one of her jumps. "Ruthie jumped really well, but she had a bad landing on her third jump," Tenisci said. "She could have advanced if that had not happened." Adjah turned in a personal record of 18'7.75" in the long jump. There was, however, some controversy over the measurement of one of Adjah's jumps. "We thought that they might have measured one of my jumps wrong," Adjah said. "A lot of people said that it looked like my best jump, but that's not how they measured it. There obviously isn't anything I can do about that now, so I'm kind of just forgetting about it." Hopefully for Penn, Adjah, Wittels and Desai, who are all planning to return next year, gained some valuable experience from competing against such a skilled field. "I thought that it was a great experience to see what the next level is all about," Tenisci said. "It was a real honor to be in that group, and our kids just went out there and did their best." With the indoor season complete, the team's attention now turns to the upcoming outdoor season. The Quakers will have a break of several weeks before the outdoor season's first meet on March 26. "We really don't have any time to rest right now," Adjah said. "With spring break coming up, we need to take advantage of all the time that we have."
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