Softball to tangle with Dragons

The Quakers look to rebound from a four-loss Ivy homestand today against city rival Drexel. Two West Philadelphia neighbors will do battle at Drexel Field today. The Penn softball team won't travel far to play a doubleheader against the Drexel Dragons at 4:00 this afternoon in a fight for University City bragging rights. Thus far this season, the Quakers boast a 4-1-1 record in the City Six, an informal but still very competitive league comprised of the Philadelphia Big 5 and Drexel. The Red and Blue swept La Salle and recorded a win and a tie against Villanova before splitting with Temple on April Fool's Day. The team will look to continue its winning ways against their Philly foes today against the Dragons. "You'd love to be the team that won the City Six," said sophomore left fielder Clarisa Apostol, who is second on the Quakers in batting average with a .286 mark. "It's great to be known as the Philly team that came out the best." "We want to prove that we're a power in the city," freshman designated hitter Heidi Albrecht added. But to come out victorious against the Dragons, the Quakers will have to fix some of their recent problems, including their lack of consistency and meager offensive production. Penn (11-20-1, 0-4) is coming off a four-game losing streak in which the Quakers were only able to produce four combined runs, while stranding a whopping 26 runners on base. For the Quakers, some of the hitting has been there, but the team has simply been struggling to get the key hits to drive runners home. "We're a good hitting team, and we've been putting hits together," sophomore second baseman Jamie Pallas said. "But we've left a lot of runners on base, and we can't do that if we want to win." The Red and Blue will look to turn this around today and hopefully keep it going for the rest of the season. "We're looking for more hits with runners in scoring position," Albrecht said. "We've simply got to get more runs on the board." Consistency has been another problem that has plagued the Quakers so far this season. "We need to bring defense, pitching and offense to each and every game," Penn coach Carol Kashow said. "We haven't executed in games the way I would like." The Red and Blue hope to fix some of these problems and get back on the winning side this afternoon. But blocking their path is a strong Drexel squad led by star pitchers Laura Tynio and Lori Swanson. The sophomore and junior hurlers have nice movement on the ball and excellent velocity. "It's not too often you find that combination," Apostol commented. "It's definitely going to be challenging. Nevertheless, the Quakers look to get back on track and end their four-game skid before heading back into their Ivy League schedule, which includes an important doubleheader against rival Princeton on Friday. But the Red and Blue will take one game at a time and not look ahead to their upcoming battle with the Tigers. "It's important not to get far-sighted," Kashow said. "We just have to try to take each day as it comes." And in today's games, the Quakers will try to finally bring runners home from scoring position and put all of the pieces together as the regular season winds to a close. "We definitely haven't played to our potential -- it's disappointing to see how well we practice and then not see the results," Apostol said. "Hopefully against Drexel we can put it all together." "We're definitely just trying to focus on playing good ball," Albrecht added. "We've got to get ourselves back together." And once the Quakers talented squad does succeed in bringing all assets of its game together, they believe the sky's the limit. "We have a lot of talent, and we will put it together soon," Pallas said. "And when we do, we're gonna rock."

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