Forget the Grapefruit League - if you're looking for some good ball this break, the Ivy League will be out in full force in the Sunshine State.
The Penn softball team will be one of five Ivy teams - Brown, Columbia, Cornell and Yale are the others - to head to Florida for the annual Rebel Spring Games, a month-long collegiate tournament held in Kissimmee.
Though Penn (1-2) will only spend a week down south, the team will face ten teams in six days - a daunting line-up considering that the Quakers only have three games under their belt heading into the tournament, in part due to some "snow days" that forced two cancelled games in the past week.
Coach Leslie King, for one, doesn't seem too worried.
"That's just the way it is," she said. "We have to accept that people will have more games than we do at this point . We come to play, regardless."
"Florida is just another time for us to get a whole lot of games out there . You know, getting comfortable," sophomore catcher Alisha Prystowsky added. "I think it's going to be a good time for us to get to know how to play with each other . [and] feel out our positions and where the kid next to you is going to be playing."
Penn faces a myriad of teams with varying skill levels, from Patriot League cornerstone Bucknell to the newly minted Division I competitors, Southern Illinois-Edwardsville.
"[Edwardsville] won the Division II title last year," King pointed out. "They're very good, and they're playing a tough schedule. It'll be fun to see what they have."
Out of the ten teams on board, the Quakers have faced only one - Butler - in the past year, splitting the series 1-1. Otherwise, pitchers and hitters will have to rely on gameday judgment calls to size up the unfamiliar.
The other seven teams Penn plays are Eastern Kentucky, Youngstown State, Maine, Valparaiso, South Dakota, Buffalo and Florida A&M.;
It's not uncharted territory for Penn, however; last year, the Quakers went into the Rebel Games with the same rust, having only played four games, going 1-1 against both Lafayette and Delaware. Yet they emerged from the tournament with an impressive eight wins.
Though the team may look a little different than the one that had a successful Florida trip last year (star infielders Christina Khosravi and Annie Kinsey graduated last year), the Quakers showed just how powerful youth could be last weekend. Freshman Jamie Boccanfuso accounted for four of the Quakers' six runs batted in against George Mason on Saturday, while Prystowsky went 4-for-4 from the plate.
"It's a totally different team," King said. "The adjustment and growth process is bigger this year. We're not at the same place defensively, but we're working hard everyday to get better."
Despite five of the Ancient Eight making the trip to Kissimmee, Penn's schedule is devoid of other Ivy competitors. And King knows that this stint is just the proverbial "spring training" for the real gauntlet of her season - Ivy League play.
"This is a time for us to test things out," King said. "Whatever works best for us. Whether you're a freshman or a senior, I don't care - whoever is producing will play."
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