Youthful Cross-country teams must grow up fast this season

The women of Penn's cross-country team are preparing for a challenging season with high hopes and set goals. But, there is one thing in their way -- they are young. Very young.

With no senior distance runners, the Quakers have quite a bit of experience to gain.

Coach Gwen Harris, in her fourth season with the Quakers, is not worried about the team's inexperience and is confident that many of the runners will rise to the challenge of leadership.

"Some people need to step up," Harris said. "We have people on the team who can do that. But I can only push them a little bit. They have to do the rest."

Junior Jen Blank, who was named the team's most valuable player for her leadership last season, and classmate Jackie Dunn, consistently one of the team's top scorers, are best suited to lead this young team for the 2005-06 season.

Also poised to step up to the challenge are sophomores -- and sisters -- Claire and Stacy Kim, who posted an exceptional first season with the Quakers, finishing in the top five at both the Heptagonal Championships as well as NCAA Regionals.

After welcoming a large and impressive group of 15 newcomers in 2004, Harris was pleased with the Quakers' performance last season.

"As a team, we finished off really well," the fourth-year coach said. "It clicked and it got itself together."

But for this season, Harris adds, there is still a great deal of work to be done.

"We need to click a little bit sooner and better than last year. We need to run as a pack and keep everyone together."

Harris believes that the 2005 squad has all of the necessary elements, but just needs to maintain a unified front in order to be successful.

"It gets a little bit better every time we run," Harris said. "We do the best we can ‹¨« set goals and try to accomplish them."

Meanwhile, the men of the cross-country team are starting a brand-new season without a trio of top runners -- Dusty Lieb, Stephen Hayes and Nolan Tully -- the three veterans graduated in May.

"We've been blessed," Coach Charlie Powell said. "We graduated some outstanding kids."

It was hard losing the senior runners but Powell is very pleased with the incoming rookie class.

"They are a wonderful group," Powell said. "We have two, possibly three new runners that can make an impact on the varsity group."

Although it will be difficult to repeat the success of last year's season, Powell believes that the runners are ready, willing and able to step up to the challenge.

The team has a great deal of talented runners across all four class years. Sophomore distance runner Brian Goldberg had an impressive freshman campaign, with a level of talent than can only increase with experience.

"Last season was a great season. We came in third at Regionals and third at Heps," Powell said. "Every year there's a high expectation."

Track All-American Courtney Jaworski certainly has the credentials to lead this 2005 squad to victory -- the two-time NCAA qualifier and school record holder is a tour de force on the track.

Powell also cites senior Breton Bonnette as one of the team's top distance runners.

Powell's main goals for the season are to keep the runners focused and ready to perform at the highest level. But he admits that it is often difficult to track standings in a sport like cross-country.

Cross country "is more like the fun class you take in college where everything depends on a midterm and a final," Powell said. "It all depends on the last couple of meets."

Both the men's and women's teams open their seasons at the Fordham Invitational in New York tomorrow. The men will try to top last year's second place finish, while the women will try to best their fourth place finish at last year's event.

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