The Penn women's track team did not win any of the 19 events at Saturday's meet. Only two runners finished in the top five and few athletes in the field events had top finishes.
However, contrary to the expected reaction from these performances, the Quakers were happy after finishing the Penn Invitational at Franklin Field.
"The meet was really positive," freshman Dana McCurdy said. "We've been working on team unity and being spectators for each other. It was awesome because everyone was cheering during all the races."
McCurdy had a successful meet, finishing fifth in the 400 meter hurdles with a time of 1:04.59, just two-tenths behind Villanova's Sherian Byam and Morgan State's Ramona Modeste. McCurdy attributes her success this week to the strong practices prior to the meet.
She explained that unlike the 100m hurdles where athletes memorize the number of steps they take, 400m hurdlers don't know which leg is going to end up doing the hurdling.
"We've been working on being aggressive and not stuttering before each hurdle" she said.
Michelle Hart, Crystal Marsh, and Rachel Dailey -- also sprinters and hurdlers -- ran with McCurdy in the 4x800m relay. Their 9:33.86, third-place finish not only surprised the Penn team but was good enough to beat the non-hurdle 4x800 squad by 12 seconds.
"It was a fun competition between the two groups," McCurdy said. "Our success was really exciting as well as unexpected."
A group of jumpers similarly competed in a relay usually not on their list of events. Ingrid Gustafson, Lauren Davis, Meghan Moran, and Caroline Rebello ran the 4x100m relay. Although they finished last, the Quakers considered the endeavor a success.
"The relay loosened us up for our jumps," Moran said. "Jumpers do have to run but we never do handoffs. It's fun to talk about how we're going to beat the real 4x100m team even though we know it will never happen."
Individually, Moran competed in the triple and long jumps. With an 11.61m triple jump, Moran finished second behind Temple's Edith Lewis.
"I jumped six times, three in the preliminaries and three in the finals," she said. "Of the six, five were lousy and one towards the beginning was good. That one good jump was all that mattered."
The field events had several other Penn successes, with sophomore Sam Crook finishing third in the pole vault at a height of 3.66 meters.
Senior Julie Siebert-Johnson also finished third in the javelin throw with a toss that traversed 43.90m.
Michelle Hart ran the 100m hurdles in 15.16 seconds, good enough to put her in third place -- the highest place of all Penn athletes in running events.
"Michelle was outstanding," Moran said. "She does well in any event she's ever put in."
"Most of us were satisfied with how we did this weekend. We didn't have a lot of people finishing in the top few but Cornell was there, and they're a big powerhouse."
McCurdy added that especially because of the poor weather conditions, the Penn coaching staff was more than satisfied with the results of the meet.
