It is a measure of just how quickly a team can turn its season around in Ivy League women's soccer that Penn, which a week ago today was in seventh place, can now finish as high as third should they beat Princeton tomorrow.
Going into last Saturday's game at Brown, the Quakers were 1-3-1 in the Ivy League, with only winless Columbia below them in the standings.
But Penn's 2-1 win over the Bears in Providence, R.I., catapulted them into a three-way tie for fourth place with Yale and Harvard.
A Penn victory over Princeton (11-1-3, 4-1-1 Ivy) and a Yale tie against Brown tomorrow in New Haven, Conn., is all that stands in the way of what would be a quite remarkable turnaround for the Quakers, now 2-3-1 in the Ivy League and 8-5-3 overall.
The Red and Blue are set to take on their biggest rival, and, on top of all that, it is Senior Day at Rhodes Field.
"Princeton's always been our rival," said senior goalkeeper Vanessa Scotto, who will play her last game for the Red and Blue tomorrow, unless they are given an unlikely at-large invitation to the NCAA College Cup.
"It's always been a game that we look forward to at the beginning of the year, and it's coming to that point."
For Ambrose, the records are of relatively little significance when the Tigers come calling.
"Whether it's seventh, eighth or first, Princeton is Princeton," he said, adding that there is "absolutely" a rivalry between the two teams.
"It's been there every year," he said.
The two teams have played each other so evenly that perhaps some of Ambrose's friends back in his native Sheffield, England -- home of one of that country's fiercest soccer rivalries -- might lend an ear. This is Ambrose's fourth season as Penn's head coach, and he has yet to record a win over Princeton -- but he has come very close.
In 2000, Princeton won, 1-0, on the Tigers' home turf. The next year, Penn won the Ivy League title with a 1-1 tie at Rhodes Field, and last year, the Tigers snatched a 2-1 overtime win at home.
Senior defender Heather Issing has not beaten Princeton in her time at Penn either and doing so is very much at the front of her mind. The same has been true for the entire team ever since a team meeting a few weeks ago, where the team discussed what the definition of a successful season would be this year.
"I said one aspect of this season would be to defeat Princeton for the first time," she said. "Ending your season defeating your rival who's always been number one -- it just couldn't be a sweeter way to end the season."
Although Issing is a senior, she has one year of eligibility remaining as she redshirted last season due to an injury. Ambrose said that she "has the option of coming back and that is to be discussed."
Princeton will come into this game with at least as much to gain from it as Penn, if not more.
If the Tigers win and last-place Cornell manages an upset at Dartmouth on Sunday, the Tigers would have a share of the Ivy League Championship. But if Penn wins and Brown and Yale tie tomorrow night, the Quakers would finish third -- quite a turnaround for a team which was far from the top of the league not too long ago.
