M. Track relying on young blood at PSU

Stephen Hayes, Joe Plevelich and Joel Miller. Not the usual names that come to mind when thinking about the Penn men's track team. After all, Sam Burley was at one point the third-ranked 800-meter runner in the country and Brian Abram is a six-time Heptagonal champion. But this weekend, Penn coach Charlie Powell will point to his underclassmen. While they have not been featured as often as their senior captains, they play just as integral a role in the Red and Blue's fight for an indoor championship as Burley and Abram. "Right now we're trying to see if we can get a couple other people to step up besides the usual cast of characters," Powell said. "We'll see if we can get that this weekend." On Friday morning, the Quakers will return to Penn State for the College Challenge Cup, the first of many important meets in the upcoming month. The Red and Blue were in State College, Pa., just two weekends ago, where they fared well in a meet that brought some of the best competition from around the nation. The College Challenge Cup is significant because it is the last big invitational before the three championship meets they run in consecutive weeks. "In some areas, it's kinda like a dress rehearsal for us," Powell said. "This is a big meet for how we finish the rest of our indoor season," senior George Witter said. "It helps us a lot going into Hep[tagonal]s." Powell cites the Quaker's performance in this meet last year as an example of its importance to the rest of the season. "We did very well in it last year, eighth out of 14 great teams," Powell said. "Last year was a good group, yet fairly young, so this performance legitimized all the work they had done and made them see they were a squad to be reckoned with." Penn went on to finish second in the indoor championship and first outdoors. The weekend is also crucial for running qualifying times for the team's upcoming championship weekends. Penn State's banked track is "a much faster track as opposed to a flat track," Witter said. "It's probably one of the best tracks in the nation to run on indoors and to get fast times, in terms of putting down qualifying times for IC4 [Championships]." Sophomores such as Hayes, Plevelich, Nolah Tully, Neal Wojdowski and Chris Carter all placed in the top 10 of their respective events at State College two weekends ago. Freshman Robert Budesa was also impressive, finishing sixth place in the 500-meter run. "The sophomores are definitely a big part of this team right now," Witter said. "As a freshman, it's a lot harder to be big time contributors, but there are a couple guys that are doing really well." While all these underclassmen ran excellent times, more is expected and necessary to be a championship team. "Even though it's not high school anymore, they still need to be counted on to compete at this level," Powell said. "They can't sit back and think, 'I'm a freshman, I don't need to do this.' "Yes you do."

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