The Daily Pennsylvanian
The game must go on.
When the Penn football team takes the field tomorrow at Columbia, it will do so with a heavy heart.
Surely every player's thoughts will turn to senior running back Kyle Ambrogi, who took his own life Monday night.
But for those three hours between the lines, the team can concentrate on football and, perhaps, escape momentarily from the tragedy.
Head coach Al Bagnoli said that work in the classroom and on the football field would return a sense of normalcy to his players.
"I think [playing] is the proper thing to do, and in the end I think it's therapeutic," he said.
Columbia coach Bob Shoop said that the sense of community will go beyond just the Penn sideline.
"Us and the Penn football family have got to come together and fight through this crisis," Shoop said.
And as insignificant as a football game seems, the Quakers have been trying their best to prepare for a 2-2 Lions squad.
One cause of concern of late for the Red and Blue has been the running game. Two weeks ago against Dartmouth, junior running back Joe Sandberg gained only one yard on the ground. He did not play last week against Bucknell with a knee injury, although Bagnoli said Sandberg could have played were it a league game.
Senior tailback Sam Mathews has been battling a shoulder injury for much of the season and rushed for 34 yards on 14 carries last Saturday. Bagnoli said that Mathews' shoulder is healing.
"We're as close to being 100 percent as we've probably been all year with those two," he said.
Running backs coach Steven Downs promised that Sandberg and Mathews would be ready for the game.
They will "lick their wounds and get ready to go to battle," Downs said. "They're both tough kids physically and mentally. That's part of the game. A lot of teams have injuries this time of year."
Downs indicated that while Mathews and Sandberg will be on the field a majority of the game, freshman running back Kelms Amoo-Achampong may also see some action. The Somerset, N.J., native received his first action of the season against Bucknell and rushed for 45 yards and a touchdown on 11 carries.
While the Quakers attempt to outwork the Lions with their depth at running back, Columbia will most likely try to do the same to Penn with two quarterbacks.
Both sophomore Craig Hormann and senior Joe Winters have played in every game for Columbia, and according to Shoop, that will not change against the Quakers.
"Both quarterbacks will play," Shoop said. "One will play the first two series, one will play the second two series and then we'll try and find the hot hand."
Bagnoli also said that Lions' two-headed quarterback monster does not pose too serious of a matchup problem for Penn, because the two quarterbacks possess similar skills.
Picking apart the Lions' secondary could be another story for the Quakers, though.
The unit is lead by junior free safety Tad Crawford, who has recorded 49 tackles in just four games.
Bagnoli described Crawford as a "pretty good open-field tackler" and praised the unit as a whole.
"Their secondary is really active," he said. "It's pretty active in run support as well as in pass coverage."
Whatever happens in the game, the Quakers will relish the opportunity to get back on the field and distract themselves, if only for one Saturday afternoon.
