With five games to play in the fall season, Penn's teams have an overall record 43-37-5 and will not bring home any Ivy League titles.
Some teams have been disappointing, some have played up to mediocre expectations, and some have demonstrated that there are reasons to have high hopes for the future.
The women's soccer team, despite a seemingly disappointing season, has a bright future.
It has a spate of talented freshmen and other young players who have the potential to develop into team and Ivy leaders, if they haven't done so already.
On a 21-player roster, 10 are freshmen. They accounted for nearly 50 percent of the points and nearly 40 percent of the starts this season.
Freshman forward Jessica Fuccello was the leading scorer with nine goals and five assists. A freshman goalie was in net every minute, as Cailly Carroll and Sara Rose combined to allow 0.84 goals per game, including seven shutouts.
The Quakers, with just four upperclassmen, will graduate two seniors this year (Megan Boys and Tracy Bienenfeld) and two next year (Rachel Fletcher and Ashley Hull).
Despite the lack of senior leadership, the Quakers had plenty of confidence in each other and their abilities from the very beginning.
"This year we were a young team," Carroll said. "Coach Ambrose had a lot of expectations for us. Some of us thought we had a chance of winning the Ivies."
Penn did not live up to those expectations, finishing seventh in the league with a record of 1-4-2 in conference and a record of 8-5-3 overall.
Ambrose was correct to make his teams play to win in the present and not let them believe they were playing for the future. Too frequently, coaches make losing campaigns into development sessions.
The soccer team not only allowed its young players to get in-game action, Ambrose forced them to. In the process, they established chemistry with their peers. When the season began, three freshmen started against Rice. In the final game of the season, against Princeton, five different freshmen started.
The missing senior leadership may have hurt Penn's performance this year, but it allowed the freshmen and sophomores, who are the heart of this team, to lead themselves and learn from their mistakes.
While I have praised the strength of the freshmen on the team, it would be foolish to ignore the sophomores. Midfielder Natalie Capuano, for example, was a captain and one of only two players to start all 16 games.
In addition, Capuano was Penn's lone first-team All-Ivy selection. Jess Rothenheber and Fuccello were named to the second team along with sophomore Nicki White.
Penn did not win an Ivy title this year, and it probably will not next year, either. However, as this young talent matures, Quakers fans can expect exciting competition in the fall seasons of 2008 and 2009.
As Carroll said with confidence and exuberance, "We had a lot of success this year. . I think we will have a lot more success in the future."
Matt Meltzer is a senior political science major from Glen Rock, N.J. His e-mail
address is meltzerm@sas.upenn.edu.
