A bad team? Not so say the M. track stars

Penn men's track coach Charlie Powell once again defamed his team and, once again, his team proved him wrong. At Indoor Heptagonal Championships in February, Powell said that his team would be lucky to finish in the upper half. The Quakers turned in an amazing performance, finishing second only to national power Princeton. Before last weekend's Raleigh Relays, Powell had another prediction. "I really don't think we have a shot to do anything," Powell said before the meet. "I mean, we're up against top national competition.... I can guarantee we won't even score any points." Apparently the Quakers were pissed. They sprinted, jumped, hurdled, vaulted and steeplechased to a victory, narrowly defeating perennial national champion Arkansas, 144.5-144. The victory by the Red and Blue was even more surprising because Powell said that several members of his team, notably seniors O'Neil Bryan (back spasms) and Bryan Kovalsky (amnesia), juniors Tuan Wreh (hip contusion) and Gene Sun (whooping cough), and sophomores Sam Burley (fractured leg) and Brian Abram (hit by an errant discus toss), were all injured. "Yes, we're rather depleted right now," Powell said the Thursday before the meet. "I mean, Burley has a broken leg. He ain't runnin'." All six "injured" Quakers turned in first-place finishes. Bryan won the 110 hurdles, Kovalsky won the 3,200, Wreh won the long and triple jumps, Sun won the 110 meter dash, Burley won the 800 and Abram won the 400. Penn freshman Adam Chubb, a key member of the stellar Red and Blue basketball team, won the high jump and set a school record in his first-ever meet with a leap of 7'6". He had some insight into why the Quakers performed so well. "Wow. I mean, you just can't stand for that kind of defamation," Chubb said. "Man, if Dunphy ever said anything like that, Jon Tross, our super-mega-he-man-of-an-enforcer, would have kicked his ass. Badly." Chubb did not expound and say whether or not the basketball team would have been able to pull out a victory. "Yeah, I was a bit surprised," Burley said. "I mean, on Thursday, it was either get my leg amputated, or run in this meet. I think I made the right choice." All calls to Powell's house were met with his answering machine, featuring his 5-year old daughter. Penn women's assistant coach Tony Tenisci had some comments on the meet. "Charlie's a very, very wonderful coach. And they're a very, very wonderful group of kids -- just like the women's team," Tenisci said. "They try so very, very hard, and are a very, very great group of kids -- again, just like the women's track team... and all of Penn sports... and the human race in general." Tenisci then started talking about the Mr./Ms. Penn contest for a few hours, after which The Daily Pennsylvanian reporter simply stopped listening. "Of course we were motivated by coach's words.... I mean, he said we were going to lose to Drexel," Wreh said. "No one on Penn's campus will stand for that. I mean Drexel, come on. Have you seen how ugly their buildings are? Have you seen how ugly their girls are?"

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