After a long layoff, the Penn men's squash team looks to get back to its winning ways tonight against Navy.
The Quakers have had a strong start to the season, going 3-1, and come into today's match ranked fourth in the nation. They have not had a match since Dec. 5, and must try to stay focused against a tough Navy team, ranked 11th.
"Navy's got a better team than they've had the past couple years," Penn coach Craig Thorpe-Clark noted. "So they're going to be more competitive and give us a harder match than usual."
To prepare, the team returned from vacation a week early, and have been practicing since. Thorpe-Clark knows that against a team like Navy (9-1), extra training is always important.
"Navy always tends to be fitter" than other opponents, Thorpe-Clark said. With this factor and the long layoff in mind, "the emphasis has been on fitness" during recent practices.
Although the Red and Blue is focused and well prepared because of the extra practice time, Thorpe-Clark admits that "it's always a little different when you play a real match."
As usual, sophomore Gilly Lane will top Penn's ladder for today's match. Lane echoed his coach's thoughts on the importance of maintaining concentration.
"We have to come in focused on the match and ready to play like it was any other match," Lane said.
"The rankings don't really matter. We just look at it as another challenge and we want to come out and do the best we can."
The team is already performing at a high level and they hope to continue to do so.
"We're having a better season than we've had in the past few years," Thorpe-Clark said.
Lane was equally as excited at the prospects for the 2004-05 Quakers.
"This is one of the best teams I've been a part of, and one of the best teams Penn's ever had" the sophomore said.
This does seem to be a special team to many who are a part of it.
"They're not really committed to squash but they're sort of committed to one another," Thorpe-Clark said. "We have good team chemistry."
So far, that chemistry has resulted in wins against Brown, Cornell and Haverford to open the season. Although Yale prevented a perfect first semester with a 7-2 win over the Quakers, Penn has still moved up in the rankings from No. 7 in the preseason poll to No. 4 in the current one.
That success, to Thorpe-Clark, "is really a matter of everyone working towards the same goals."
Lane claims the main team goal is "to finish four in the country. If we can get up to three, we can get up to three, but we go into every practice knowing that we are No. 4 in the country, and remaining there is what we want to do."
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