A Saturday without football

The Penn football players really don't know what to think about the cancellation of the game they were supposed to play on Saturday against Lehigh at Franklin Field.

On one hand, the Quakers wanted to play No. 11 Lehigh. It was their chance to face a nationally ranked opponent, to prove they can compete with a quality team outside of the Ivy League.

On the other hand, they can't quite get what happened in New York and Washington out of their minds.

"I would have liked to play," Penn sophomore defensive back Kevin Stefanski said. "But I also would have liked not to see what happened on Tuesday."

"We've been preparing for this game since spring ball, so it's very frustrating that all the effort we put out went to waste," Penn junior defensive back Fred Plaza said. "But it's a very sensitive issue.... Everyone was affected by it, even if you didn't know anyone."

The final decision to postpone the game -- and all other Penn athletic events through yesterday -- was made by the Athletic Department on Thursday evening.

According to several players on the team, the game will most likely not be rescheduled. Penn has no open dates in its schedule until the last Saturday in November, and Lehigh will likely be playing in a playoff game that weekend.

So the Quakers appear headed toward a nine-game schedule, with the only two non-conference games being played against a pair of non-ranked foes -- Lafayette and Holy Cross.

"We wanted to play Lehigh to show that we're a top-caliber team," Penn junior linebacker Travis Belden said. "We're not going to play anyone else that has the same national recognition they have."

Still, that doesn't mean the Quakers didn't agree with the decision to cancel the game.

"I think that it's very important for us, as well as everyone else in the [United States], to get back to a normal schedule," Belden said. "But I also think it would have been a very sloppy thing. Everyone's mind is focused on other things.

"Out of respect, and physically, we shouldn't have played."

That seems to be the consensus. The Quakers are itching to play anyone competitively. They've been in camp since Aug. 21, and the only close-to-game action they have seen was a rain-shortened, quarter-and-a-half scrimmage with Princeton two weeks ago.

"Everybody's chomping at the bit to hit people of the opposite color," Stefanski said.

But the Penn football players are also shaken by what happened on Tuesday -- especially in the first few days of practice after the events.

"You could feel that nobody's mind was there, and rightfully so," Stefanski said. "Practicing and seeing the flag at half-staff, it's difficult."

The past few days of practice have been a little less somber, and players say they have tried to escape through football. But that does not mean they have forgotten. After all, the American flag at Franklin Field is still only half way up the staff.

"It's sort of healing with time," Plaza said. "But it's still in the back of your minds when you're out there practicing."

Penn will now play its first two games of the season on the road -- Saturday at Lafayette and Sept. 29 at Dartmouth.

And those two opponents are nowhere near Lehigh's caliber. The Mountain Hawks went 12-1 last year, with their only loss occurring in the second round of the Division I-AA playoffs.

Lafayette, meanwhile, was 2-9, while Dartmouth was 2-8.

Penn's other non-conference game is against Holy Cross (7-4 last year), and the remainder of the schedule includes the rest of the Ancient Eight teams.

"Yeah, there's some good teams in the Ivy League," Belden said. "But the Ivy League still has that stigma of smart kids that play football. If we came out and beat [Lehigh], it would have given us some respect."

But the Quakers believed a different sort of respect took precedence on Saturday.

"It's disappointing that it was canceled," Penn freshman linebacker Luke Hadden said. "But I understand that it had to be, out of respect."

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