A Gatorade shower in 40-degree weather never felt so good.
Yesterday afternoon, coach Rudy Fuller happily had a cooler dumped on his head by his 2008 Ivy League Co-Champion Quakers.
After 94 minutes in the freezing wind at Rhodes Field yesterday - in a match originally scheduled for Saturday night, postponed one day because of inclement weather - a winner had not been decided. But with 5:52 left in the first overtime, a hero emerged.
Loukas Tasigianis, a sophomore from Ridgefield, N.J., gave the Quakers a golden goal send-off to the NCAA tournament.
He scored on a breakaway down the middle of the field for a 1-0 victory over Harvard and a share of the Ivy title with Dartmouth.
"I don't even know how [the play] started," said Tasigianis. "I just saw the ball right in front of me and started sprinting."
Running evenly with his defender from midfield, Tasigianis carried the ball to the right of the goal mouth until the keeper left his line.
With a defender on his back and the goalie closing to the right, Tasigianis threaded the two with a backside touch and immediately ripped off his jersey in celebration.
Amid dejected Crimson players scattered across the field, the Quakers (11-2-4, 5-1-1 Ivy) made a full-team charge across the width of the pitch to hogpile Tasigianis and to climb into the stands to share the moment with the 592 fans in attendance.
Penn answered a lot of questions entering its final regular-season game.
It had been nearly impossible to score on Crimson keeper Austin Harms. In 10 games this season, the freshman from California had a 0.42 goals against average to lead the conference.
In addition, Harvard came in netting 2.27 goals per game courtesy of the league's two leading scorers, Andre Akpan and Michael Fucito, who finished the year with 24 and 22 goals, respectively.
To make matters worse, the Quakers' back line was without senior Ryan Porch, who decided to sit after a right-groin injury kept him from practicing at full-strength this week.
Porch was unfazed about not playing on Senior Day.
"I know that whoever's replacing me is going to do just as good a job," he said.
Enter Lee Rubenstein. The junior defender from nearby Penn Valley smothered the Harvard strikers all afternoon, anchoring the middle aside Jake Levin.
Rubenstein couldn't match Porch's 6-foot-4 frame, but he snuffed shots, distributed the ball and guarded the net with Porch-like physicality, leaving the match caked in mud.
"We focused on having a low line of pressure up top, which allowed us to be compact," Rubenstein said. "That really limited Fucito's ability to get in - he got in a few times but [Drew] Healy did a great job stopping the ball."
Hearing about a Drew Healy shutout this season has sounded like a broken record, but now it's official.
With Sunday's clean sheet - Healy's 11th on the year - he passed Matthew Haefner for first all-time on the Penn's list of single-season shutouts.
"That's definitely not a reflection of just myself, it's a reflection of everybody," Healy said. "It just shows you how special this team is."
Indeed - yesterday's win gives these 12 seniors 35 wins as a group, good enough for top-10 all-time for a Penn graduating class.
"Words can't describe it," Fuller said. "They've left a mark on the program, and it was fitting that they were able to come away with a title at the end.
"We're going to savor this one today and probably tomorrow and until those selections come out tomorrow evening. Then we'll get to work."
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