There will be old faces in new places tomorrow at Franklin Field; many of the athletes on the Penn men's and women's track and field teams will be competing in events in which they don't normally participate at during the Penn Invitational.
This strategy is customary for Penn coach Charlie Powell, who wants to train his team in all aspects of their sport.
"You've got to be good in all events," Powell said. "We want them to be in fantastic shape."
Long-distance runners could find themselves running sprints, while some of those sprinters may find themselves lining up for the 400-meters.
The mixed-up team will be competing against a few familiar foes.
Mainly coming from Pennsylvania or the Ivy League, the field consist of Penn State, Navy, Villanova and Cornell.
Powell emphasizes that there is no feud brewing among the teams, but he did not extend this fact to the athletes.
"In our sport, the rivalries are all individual," he said.
Those rivalries may be fresh in some athletes' minds since Penn and Navy competed last weekend in Annapolis, Md.
There, the Quakers earned a second-place finish out of six teams with 128 points, but Navy blew away the competition with 216.
That meet was disrupted by strong winds and bad weather, which are similar to the conditions predicted for tomorrow.
"We're not going to jeopardize our sprinters and jumpers if it begins to rain," Powell said, but he predicted that "there are going to be a lot of fantastic events."
The coach mentioned that events of particular interest would be the high hurdles and the 4x100m relay.
Last weekend, the Red and Blue's men's 'A' and 'B' teams placed 1-2 in the 4x100m, and the Quakers will be looking for even faster times this weekend.
Other standout performances included junior Grafton Ifill's 200m and senior Mark Materna's 1500m.Penn's female counterpart will be coming off a meet from last weekend in Maryland where it finished fourth out of 27 squads.
The women's team also had two individual first-place finishes in its last meet. Junior Tina Morrison in the 1500m and senior Dana McCurdy in the 800m both provided the Quakers with top times in their events.
The team will hope to repeat its performance in what Powell believes will be "a very spirited and great meet."
The two Penn teams will relish the chance to compete together, as they will be traveling to different Ivy League destinations the next weekend.
The women will contend against Yale and Princeton in New Haven, Conn., while the men will face off in Princeton, N.J., against the Tigers, Villanova and Rutgers.
The Quakers will return home to Franklin Field for the Penn Relays the weekend of April 27-29.
