M. Track wins as the Big Red band played on

Last weekend at Cornell was "Rivals Weekend." The Big Red host all their biggest rivals in each spring sport, and for men's track, that's Penn. And since it was Rivals Weekend, the Big Red had a huge number of fans. And they were cheering. And the band played. And none of this mattered to Sam Burley, who led the Penn men's track team to a 86-77 victory over Cornell in Ithaca, N.Y. Also, none of this mattered to Sam Burley. "With the meet on the line, he just came up to me and said, 'I'll take the 4x400, don't worry,'" head coach Charlie Powell said. With the meet coming down to the 4x400 meter relay -- the final event -- the sophomore pulled ahead in the third leg of the race with a 47.6 split. Fellow sophomore Brian Abram held the lead to clinch the Red and Blue win. Burley, who had not run since February 10, also won the 800 in 1:51.6. "The crowd really didn't intimidate me at all," Burley said. "I kind of just laughed at it -- I mean, who brings a band to a track meet?" While Burley made an impressive comeback, two Quakers one-upped him by qualifying for the NCAA National Championships. Both freshman Adam Chubb in the high jump and junior Tuan Wreh in the triple jump met their respective qualifying marks. The top 18 in the country travel to Eugene, Ore., on May 31 for nationals. In the high jump, both Chubb and Cornell's Peter Ippel had reached a height of seven feet. With the bar raised to 7'1 3/4", Chubb calmly leapt over the bar for the win and the Penn school record. "It was amazing that Adam was able to win that event -- he was behind the whole meet, and Ippel had just set the Cornell school record," Powell said. "The band was playing and the crowd was doing cheers and he just cleared the bar without a problem." Wreh destroyed the competition in the triple jump, and his 52.0" jump was good enough for second place in Penn history. Powell attributes Wreh's surge in his jumps to the teaching of new coach Jamie Cook, who works one-on-one with Wreh daily at practice. "Tuan is really starting to open up," Powell said. "He and coach Cook have really doing some amazing things." The Red and Blue had numerous first-place finishes at the meet, including Laethe Coleman -- a dual winner in the 100 and 200 -- senior Mike Aguilar, who won the 110 hurdles in 14.1, freshman Lugman Kolade, who won the 400 hurdles in 53.7, and Brendan Callahan, winner of the shot put with a 15.32-meter toss. Powell was especially pleased with the performance of two of his seniors, Aaron Prokopec and Seth Beaver. Prokopec won the pole vault with a height of 4.8 meters, while Beaver won the javelin with a throw of 63.76 meters. "Some of the younger guys were a bit intimidated by the crowd," Powell said. "But Aaron and Seth just didn't let that faze them and looked great." With Heptagonal Championships looming, the Red and Blue have emerged as a possible favorite to win the Ivy League. With Burley back from injury and senior hurdler O'Neil Bryan expected to be back by Heps, Penn appears to be getting everything in order to make a run at the title. "I really wanted to get back in order to help my team win Heps," Burley said. "After we got second at indoors, we've been a really tight team and we believe we can take Heps."

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