Perspective: Penn Relays

Thousands of fans and athletes will descend upon Penn for this weekend's track carnival For 19 years, Brigham Young assistant women's track coach Patrick Shane was satisfied with track meets in the West, content with not traversing more than one time zone to find competition for his Cougars. But a pair of sisters from Clifton, Va., were not satisfied. BYU distance runners Jessica and Laura Heiner had both competed in the Penn Relays while at Centreville High School, and both pleaded with Shane for another chance to run in what they thought was the pinnacle of track meets. For four years, Jessica was unsuccessful, but last year Laura finally got Shane to cave. The Cougars would take one -- and only one -- trip to the Penn Relays. That trip, however, would turn out to be much more than a one-time tool of appeasement for Shane. After a late-April weekend last year spent in and around Franklin Field -- a weekend of seeing more than 40,000 fans pack the stadium and thousands more athletes re-baptize the rubberized track with their blood, sweat and tears -- Shane vowed BYU would make the trek to the Penn Relays every year. "I just didn't realize what we were missing," Shane says. Shane learned his lesson. Once he came to Philadelphia for that storied weekend in April, he came to realize what the country's most spectacular track carnival is all about. · Coming from the west coast, Shane's ignorance was understandable. The Penn campus has no such excuse, yet it seems largely unaware of an event that brings almost 100,000 people to its eastern fringe every April. "A lot of people on campus don't understand what Penn Relays is about," Penn distance runner Sean MacMillan says. And unless you've experienced it first-hand, it's hard to comprehend exactly what the Relays are about. On the surface, the Penn Relays seem to be, plain and simple, one of the most competitive and high-profile track meets in the world. This is a track meet where you can see the pure greatness of Michael Johnson blistering through an anchor leg on the Nike relay team and the sheer competitiveness of 32 guys who can run under 50 seconds for a quarter-mile in the college men's mile relay. And this year "USA vs. The World" sprint relays and a Kenyan team trying to break a world record in the 4x1500 meter relay -- along with tape-delay coverage on ESPN on Sunday -- make the Relays even bigger on the scale of athletic grandeur. But the Relays are not just about athletic excellence. If you're looking for the acme of athletic greatness, turn to the Olympics. The Penn Relays, on the other hand, represent something more, albeit something a little less tangible. "The Olympics embodies all of the nations of the world," Penn assistant coach Tony Tenisci says. "The Penn Relays embodies every level of society, so it becomes such a human event." Put simply, the people that compete in the Penn Relays are not all world-class athletes like Marion Jones and Maurice Greene. Most of the people that compete in the Penn Relays are a lot more like Bassey Adjah. · Adjah -- a junior at Penn -- is a good jumper and sprinter by Ivy League standards, but at the Penn Relays she blends in as just another competitor, just a speck of red and blue amidst the spectrum of colors that permeates the event. Adjah practices nearly every day on the track and turf at Franklin Field, and while the clay-colored, 10-lane track and bright-green turf should be old hat to her, sometimes she can't help but marvel. Sometimes she can't help but look up at the clock and scoreboard or the rows and rows of empty bleachers with visions of Penn Relays dashing through her head. "All those stands are going to be filled, and I still can't fathom it," Adjah says in obvious awe. "Penn Relays just gets bigger and bigger every year." The first time Adjah came to the Relays was when she was a sophomore in high school, and her first impression of the event was like that of so many other athletes. "It was a lot to take in," Adjah says. "There were so many people, it was scary. I was in awe the first time I walked in." Adjah's team won its heat of the 4x400 meter relay that day, and four years later, she was a part of Penn's school record-breaking 4x200 relay team. Her Relays success, however, hasn't dimmed Adjah's reverence for the nearly week-long event. "Every single year I walk in awe," Adjah says. · It's not just the athletes who walk in awe -- it's the thousands upon thousands of spectators. Penn Relays Director Dave Johnson stumbles as he tries to describe his first Penn Relays experience, trying to reach for the right words to describe those initial impressions. "The first time I walked in, I was standing under the clock looking at that whole grandstand, in the east end, in the upper deck," Johnson says. "Seeing the whole place filled is just an amazing sight." Johnson, like Adjah, was introduced to the Relays as a runner in high school. But Johnson never actually competed in the Relays. Too slow to run in his Swarthmore High School team's mile relay, he first attended in 1968 with the team's alternate ticket. The highlight of the Relays that year was Larry James' 43.9 quarter-mile leg in Villanova's winning mile relay. But Johnson was outside the stadium -- his team had left early to beat the traffic -- and only heard a roar from the track when James became the first to split a quarter-mile under 44 seconds. "All I knew was something big had happened. We didn't know what," Johnson says. "I didn't learn it until I read the paper the next morning, and then I realized I'll never leave before the last event again." · The idea for the Penn Relays was spawned in 1893, as Chair of the University Track Committee Frank B. Ellis staged a mile relay race on Penn's athletic field, located where the Quad now stands. Two years later -- on April 12, 1895 -- the Relays were born at Franklin Field. Penn won that first official mile relay race in an atmosphere far different than that to which today's spectators and athletes are accustomed. Back in 1895, the Relays were just a one-day event that took place on a dirt track with the only seating being one wooden bleacher. Today, the five-day Relays take place on a synthetic track surface with automatic timing and thousands of metallic benches and plastic chairs for spectators. And the Relays are now officially called the Penn Relays Carnival -- an appropriate title given all that goes on outside the stadium. During the day, music blares as vendors set up shop along 33rd and Walnut streets and the surrounding streets become nearly impassable due to the crowds of track devotees. And when the sun goes down, Franklin Field releases its masses into the city, making the night air buzz with the electricity fans and athletes transfer to parties. · A big part of that carnival atmosphere at the Penn Relays stems from the Jamaican presence -- a presence that makes this more than just an ordinary American track meet. The stereos of the vendors unleash reggae onto the streets. Dreadlocks have a peculiar ubiquity in the stands, and the streets are filled with people carrying Jamaican flags. "It seems like a lot of people suddenly become honorary Jamaicans," MacMillan says. Typically, Jamaican supporters -- usually athletes from the island and expatriates from the Philadelphia or New York area -- take up residence in a certain section of the stands, making the divide between islanders and non-islanders quite tangible. Last year, the scene in the stands for the boys' high school 4x400 relay was one to watch. The race matched up several strong Jamaican squads with several strong American squads, and it seemed everyone was either chanting, "U-S-A" or screaming and waving a Jamaican flag. "I don't know if we could recruit Jamaicans if we didn't go to the Penn Relays," Texas Christian University coach Monty Stratton says. "It's a big homecoming for them because all of the high school contingent and all of their coaches and friends and family that comes in." · Obviously, the Penn Relays represent almost a Mecca for some, but others -- like many students on Penn's campus -- just don't seem to understand. And Dave Johnson can certainly see why. "If you're not tied in with the sport or the cultural flavor of the Relays, you have a difficult time truly appreciating it," Johnson says. But the Relays do open up new avenues for people who don't usually follow track. "It seems like everyone wants to run track for this one weekend," Penn jumper Tuan Wreh says. And for die-hard supporters, the Penn Relays is a celebration of the sport and a celebration of everything connected with it. Tenisci likes to relate a story about a man he met on the track, a man who related just how important the Relays were to him. "The two greatest moments in my life have been the birth of my children and my Penn Relays medal," the man told Tenisci. Patrick Shane would have scoffed at such a statement about the Penn Relays two years ago, but maybe now he's beginning to understand. Maybe now he's beginning to realize how, in this one weekend, track and its fans have a chance to crawl out of the woodwork -- to momentarily emerge from the usual shadows and, whether seeing the Penn Relays for the first or 71st time, return awestruck.