Both the Penn men's and women's track teams will be in action this weekend, but the teams will only share one thing in common. And if it's not the venue, the objective or the opponents then what is it?
The weather. Both teams are hoping that good old Mother Nature can give them a good weekend in order perform at their highest levels.
The men's team will compete in the Penn Quad, which will be held at Franklin Field tomorrow afternoon against Princeton, Villanova and Rutgers.
Meanwhile, the women's squad will be traveling down the road to Princeton, where it will take on the Tigers and Yale.
Men's coach Charlie Powell's objective for the meet is to garner qualifying marks for IC4A and the NCAA regionals.
"We are trying to get some quality performances in and we are getting at that time where we really need to get things in," he said.
Junior Tim Kaijala has already reached the qualifying mark in the 800-meter dash and sophomore Anthony Abitante has done the same with the pole vault. Powell hopes many more of his athletes will be able to reach those marks.
He mentioned Grafton Ifill, Joey Brown, John Guzman, Kyle Calvo, Andrew McMillen, Bryan Scotland and Chris Howell all as possible qualifiers after this weekend.
The women, however, have a different goal to achieve this weekend. Their meet is a scoring one, and they are hoping to win it.
"I want to win, period," coach Gwen Harris said.
The women's team is striving to get as many qualifying marks as they can along the way, but that was hardly stressed by its coach.
The one thing in both teams' way, the weather, is considered the biggest obstacle by both coaches.
"Every time we look at [the weather forecast] it changes," Powell said.
Harris said the same.
"We have been having bad weather and some people take a little big longer than others to get going in this weather," she said.
And if the current forecast holds, both teams will have an uphill road to the qualifying marks and results they want to see.
