Brown in town to visit W. Lax

Penn welcomes the Bears for the final Ivy game of the year - a battle for sixth place. Perhaps it is only fitting that on Easter weekend the Penn women's lacrosse team will try to resurrect its season. In the midst of a four-game skid, the Quakers (5-6, 1-4 Ivy) are hopeful they can right their ship and spring back into the win column when they host Brown (4-7, 1-4) at Franklin Field at 4 p.m. tomorrow. Both teams head into this contest on a downturn. The Bears come in as losers of six of their last seven, while Penn has dropped four consecutive games to Harvard, Rutgers, No. 9 Dartmouth and No. 2 Princeton. But although the Quakers' last two losses have been verifiable blowouts, 18-7 to the Big Green and 19-4 to the Tigers, the home squad still heads in on a high note of sorts. "Going into the stretch with Rutgers, Dartmouth and Princeton, I think we were all kind of intimidated that this was going to be a lot all at once," Penn defender Ella Masson said. "But I think we're going to take all of that sort of seeing-and-learning from them and show Brown what we are. I'm looking forward to it." This kind of attitude has permeated the Quakers locker room of late, as the team looks to win the battle for sixth place in the Ivies against an offensively-challenged Brown squad. "I think these two games didn't hurt us by any means," said Penn coach Karin Brower of the Dartmouth and Princeton losses. "Like I told them, I think we've gotten better since Harvard. We've played the whole game; and we hustled; and we played with heart. "We need to think of Brown as a Princeton and Dartmouth and do whatever it takes to play that hard, and I think we can beat them." A year ago, the Quakers closed out a dismal 1-12 campaign with a disappointing 13-2 loss to the Bears in Providence. Twelve months later, Penn is one win away from amassing its most victories since 1994 and may actually enter this game as a favorite. "We approach a lot of our games the same, but we know that Penn has done a lot better this spring," Brown assistant coach Missy Holmes said. "The way our season has gone this year, we can't take anybody for granted. And we really wouldn't do that for Penn, [after] seeing them play some of their games, and, obviously, with the new coach and some new excitement down there, they're going to be a threat for us on Saturday." Offensively -- at least on paper -- the Quakers seem to have a slight edge on the Bears. As a team, Brown has accumulated only 89 goals through 11 games, compared to 115 for Penn. Sophomore attacker Traci Marabella leads Penn with 27 goals, and is followed by senior tri-captain Brooke Jenkins, who has 22. Four freshmen --Crissy Book, Jayme Munnelly, Kate Murray and Whitney Horton -- have also reached double-digits in points for the Quakers this spring. By contrast, the Bears are led by senior Cristi Gigon's 21 tallies and six assists, as well as by senior Keely McDonald (18 goals in 1999). "Christi is just a really threatening attacker. She has the ability to go left and right, and she's a good feeder. She just has a lot of weapons and is good to have down there," Holmes said. "But we're a fairly young team -- we have seven seniors, but beyond that, a lot of the team is sophomores and freshmen, so we're still in the learning phase." Charged with stopping Gigon and the Brown front-line will be Quakers goalie Christian Stover, and Penn's defensive line of Masson, Lee Ann Sechovicz, Amy Weinstein and Christy Bennett. Stover made 22 saves at Princeton on Wednesday, but also faced an astoundingly high total of 41 shots. The Quakers defense has allowed an average of 16 goals in the last four games, but this has been against competition where Penn's backline had been forced to work serious overtime. Against the Bears -- who fell to Yale, 12-3, and Cornell, 11-6, in its past two appearances -- the Quakers will look to reverse that trend. "And I think if we can build on these last two games, it's a good way for us to go into Brown," said Brower after the Princeton loss. "I was proud of my team, especially defensively and of Christian in the cage." Tomorrow's contest is the Quakers final home match of the 2000 campaign and the final game at Franklin Field for seniors Jenkins, Sechovicz, Melissa Rantz and Bethany Stafford. The usual pre-game ceremonies are already scheduled, but what may be more important to the Quakers is that a postgame -- and post-win -- celebration take place as well. "This will be the end of my eighth season at Franklin Field," said Jenkins, who has also labored in the fall with the Penn field hockey team for the past four years. "I've never had a season off since I was seven -- I don't know what I'll do."

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