It may be early in the season, but the men's and women's track teams are already starting to post some solid times.
The Quakers put up a strong showing at the Penn Invitational on Saturday afternoon, winning a total of eight events. They were also runners-up in three of the four relays.
Most of the events were dominated by Penn, Cornell and Dartmouth, the three Ivy schools involved.
The most impressive runs of the day came from the women's 4x100- and 4x400-meter relay teams. Even though both placed second behind Cornell, each team's time set a new Penn record. The 4x100 team of Jesse Carlin, Shaunee Morgan, Krysta Copeland and Izu Emeagwali finished in 46.98 seconds, and the 4x400 team, Carlin, Morgan, Emeagwali and Dana McCurdy, posted a time of 3:49.82. The times qualified both teams for the NCAA Regionals.
To Penn women's coach Gwen Harris, the weekend's races were preparation for events later in the season. Harris was happy with the performances, especially with the 4x400 team, but knows they can still improve.
"The relay team kind of surprised me," said Harris. "I thought we could run a 3:40 and we ran a 3:39. These guys are ready to run better than they did today."
Penn owned the dash races. For the men, Clemson transfer Grafton Ifill won both the 100m and 200m dashes, and for the women Emeagwali won the 100m, and Morgan won the 200m.
As one of Penn's star sprinters, Emeagwali was happy to win the race, but was still not satisfied. She ran the 100 meters in 12.59 seconds, but would like to run it in under 12 seconds.
"I'm very happy I won the 100m, but I didn't have a very good time," Emeagwali said. "I had a bad start and I was way off my personal record."
Tina Morrison placed fifth and qualified for NCAA regionals in the women's 800m race with a time of 2:08.59.
In the field events, Penn took home four top finishes. Samantha Crook won the women's pole vault, Shani Boston won the women's long jump, Neal Wojdowski won the men's pole vault, and Dustin Johnson won the men's javelin.
The track teams are still in the process of getting into top shape, so there still is room for improvement.
"We can improve a whole lot," Senior sprinter Tony Archibong said. "This is the first day we did the 4x100. The more we run it the more comfortable we're going to get with our exchanges. As time progresses the times are going to fall lower and lower."
Unlike most of the team, Penn hurdler -- and basketball point guard -- David Whitehurst was just trying to get into the swing of things. Because of basketball season, this was the freshman's first track meet since arriving at Penn.
Whitehurst finished second in the 110m hurdles with a time of 14.54 seconds, less than a hundredth of a second behind Dartmouth's Mustafa Abdur-Rahim.
But men's head coach Charlie Powell is thinking about progression, and his team showed potential this weekend.
"We've got a lot of guys who are looking real good ... We hope over the next month or so we really start picking up momentum," he said.
