"The key is to get the ball rollin' and keep it rollin', and we've got that ball rollin'."
Coach Charlie Powell and the men's track team certainly lived up to his credo at the Giegengack Invitational hosted by Yale University this weekend.
The Penn men's team set nine IC4A qualifying marks, led by junior Tim Kaijala, who not only set an IC4A mark but also set an NCAA provisional mark in the 800-meter run.
Kaijala ran 1:49.40, setting a personal best. He currently holds the fifth-best time in the country in the 800 meter. He wasn't alone in the 800, though, as teammate John Guzman also set an IC4A mark with a time of 1:53.78.
Sophomore Anthony Abitante continues to improve and impress. He also set an IC4A qualifying mark by clearing 5.00 meters in the pole vault, his highest mark of the season so far. He expects that mark to be even higher by the time the league championships roll around.
Powell couldn't say enough about how Abitante and Kaijala performed.
"Anthony is so young, and the way he is handling all the pressure is amazing," he said. "At the same time, you have to take your hat off to anyone who is running the fifth-fastest time in the country."
The distance medley relay was the big story on the women's side. On Friday, a squad of Jesse Carlin, Christina Morrison, Shaunee Morgan and Stacy Kim fell just four seconds short of an NCAA qualifying mark.
Then yesterday, a totally new squad of Kinjal Parikh, Lauren Blake, Anna Aagenes and Jamie Liberti picked up an ECAC mark, one of four on the weekend for the women in the same event.
And Shaunee Morgan nearly added herself to the list of ECAC qualifiers with a time of a 7.79 seconds in the 60 meter dash, just one-hundredth away from the Penn record.
That same day for the men, sophomore Joey Brown also set an IC4A qualifying mark by running a 6.92 in the 60m dash. He finished third in the race, but that was the fastest time recorded out of anyone in the League to date.
Sam Shepherd ran the 400-meter dash at 49.09 for second place in the meet, just a few hundreds of a second behind the top finisher, who came in with a time of 48.99. This also was an IC4A mark, however, it was not even his best time of the season.
Bryan Scotland, Reid McEwen and Brian Goldberg also all set IC4A marks. Scotland set his mark in the 500-meter dash while McEwen and Goldberg both set their marks in the 5,000-meter run. The 4x400-meter relay team also qualified with a time of 3:17.73.
"You expect this from them every week now, you see what they can do in practice and these results aren't that big of a surprise," Powell said.
