For Penn senior Brian Chaput, the first outdoor meet of the year was back to business as usual.
The 2003 NCAA javelin champion made his first throws of the spring season and walked away with his first of what he hopes will be many victories.
For the rest of the Penn track team, last weekend was also back to business. Penn hosted the annual Quaker Invitational Saturday at Franklin Field. The meet had no team scoring and featured mostly local teams.
"A great start for the year," Penn men's track coach Charlie Powell said of the meet, which basically served as a warmup for the men's and women's teams.
"It was a good meet to have as the season opener," Penn senior distance runner Kim Milans said. "It gave us the opportunity to get the kinks out and work on more technical events in a relatively relaxed setting."
Penn women's track coach Gwen Harris agreed. "It's a pretty good starting point," she said. "See what you need to do to make changes, and create practice ideas."
Penn also saw a ton of individual success. The relatively poor level of competition made for a leaderboard full of Quakers.
For the men, Chaput, Joe Fabiani in the 5000 meters, senior Matt Wedge in the 110-meter hurdles and junior Neil Wojdowski in the pole vault rounded out Penn's winners.
The Penn women also dominated the competition. "Everyone placed pretty high, somebody in the top four or five in every event," Milans said.
But Harris was quick to dismiss individual performances.
"We want to look at where we were this time last year, and everyone performed extremely well compared to last year," she said.
The women also swept the relay events, taking home first place in the 4x100, 4x400 and 4x800 relays.
Freshman Catrina Chisholm also made her presence known in the hammer throw.
The Delta, British Columbia, native won her first collegiate outdoor hammer throw, cementing herself as a contender for the Ivy League title.
Both the men's and women's teams seem to be headed toward successful seasons.
"We're setting our sights higher this year," Milans said. "Recently we have been setting goals beyond the Ivies to Easterns, Regionals and Nationals."
As far as their chances of achieving their goals, both coaches seemed cautiouslyoptimistic.
"We'll find out," Powell said. "You never know at this point of the year, you just want to remain up there all the time, always going for the win."
"We're just trying to get ourselves back in the rhythm of practicing right now," Harris explained, pushing off any year-long predictions until later meets.
"We'll see bigger improvements when we're tested by better competition," Milans said.
For both teams, this weekend was a warmup for the season, a taste of the team and personal successes that may or may not come as the year progresses.
Both men's and women's teams will travel to the Raleigh Relays this weekend in North Carolina.
