With no cross-country experience in high school, minimal participation as a freshman and sophomore and a stress fracture during last year's season, Penn senior Emily Logan realized on her way to Van Cortland Park on Saturday that this was to be her fifth cross-country race ever.
Five was Logan's lucky number. Her fifth-place finish led the Quakers to a second-place finish at the Fordham Invitational in New York City.
"A lot of it is that I trained really hard over the summer," she said. "It also is really helpful that we have such a big group of girls."
The Quakers had been focusing throughout the preseason on running as a group, and this technique worked Saturday.
"Right now, our team focus is to stay together, to work in packs," sophomore Christine Myers said. "It really paid off."
Logan was Penn's top runner on the weekend, finishing in 18:47. Columbia's Alex Guererro took first in 18:12 and assisted in the Lions' first-place team finish. Penn freshmen Emily Buzzell and Jennifer Blank finished seventh and ninth, respectively.
For Buzzell, running with girls she was familiar with helped ease her nerves about competing at the collegiate level for the first time. Communication was also a key contributor.
"We'd say things to each other like 'Let's really work this hill,' so it wasn't that different from practice," she said.
Penn coach Gwen Harris advised her athletes to stay together for the first two miles and then give everything they had left for the last mile. Logan did precisely that.
"There was a little over a mile left and the course was still really hilly," Logan said. "We were going up one of the last hills and I felt really good, so I started to pick it up. The last mile is pretty flat so then I just went as fast as I could."
Logan was also happy to be able to go comfortably for the first part of the race with teammates she works out with all the time. For her it was great "not having to think."
"The freshmen are great," Myers said. "They were told to stay together and they really showed some maturity."
On an individual level, Myers' seventh-place finish among Penn athletes was not the finish she would have liked. Her plan is to get in significant extra mileage early on in the season and hopefully see the effects later.
"I'm disappointed in some ways, but more so I'm really excited for the team," Myers said. "Overall we did great."
Logan agrees and thinks Penn is at a good place for so early in the season. Since the Quakers have spent little time working on speed, Logan supports Harris' plan to keep the top five or six runners within seconds of each other during races.
"Coach Harris boosted the whole morale of the team," Buzzell said. "Afterwards she was really encouraging and that really meant a lot."
