The Penn women’s cross country team had quite the showing in its second meet of the season.
In a five-kilometer race where some key contributors didn’t lace up, the Quakers still managed a second-place finish as a team.
Of the eight Penn women who toed the line, junior L’Mio Edwards finished as the Quakers’ top scorer with a blistering 17:56.0, a personal best. It was her first race of the season, and she established dominance early. The junior stayed with the top pack for the duration of the race, never wavering off her hot pace.
“I mean, honestly, she’s just a special athlete kind of all around, like she’s great on the track,” women’s cross country coach Matt Gosselin said. “I’ve kind of challenged her to continue to be a better distance runner. And what we said leaving the last outdoor season was [that] being the best 5K runner that you can be in cross country will help you on the track as well. And I think she took that on as a challenge.”
Edwards finished as the Quakers’ low stick and fourth overall. Also finishing within the top 10 was senior Kelly Murray with a time of 18:06.6, good for 10th overall.
“So our strategy was to have something left in the tank for the last mile and to try to go by people in the last mile,” Gosselin said. “We want to be a team that finishes really well always, and so the idea was to be really disciplined in the first two miles of the race so that we could really attack the last mile.”
Perhaps no runner executed this race strategy better than senior Camille Jordan. After not starting off amongst the top runners in the field, Jordan gradually worked her way up into the top 15. A final surge by the senior propelled her into 11th place overall while she notched a new personal record of 18:10.1.
The Red and Blue ultimately finished second as a team, only beaten by the Villanova Wildcats, with Penn’s top seven runners finishing in the top 30. Although the race featured a mix of Division I and Division III athletes, it served as the season opener for six of the eight Quakers.
Gosselin viewed the race as an important step in gauging fitness as the Quakers gear up for their biggest meet yet, the Paul Short Invitational.
“Obviously we’ve done a lot of really good workouts, but you don’t always see everything in workouts. You need to compete to really see where you’re at. So it’s good to kind of get one of those good tests as we go into some of the bigger meets,” Gosselin said.
“Paul Short is a big one for us. We go there almost every year, and the regional meet is there every year. So we want to have a good experience with that,” he added.
On the men’s side of things, only three Quakers competed in the four-mile race, all of whom made their season debuts. Penn’s men’s cross country team used this meet as a way to work out some of their middle distance runners and get them more accustomed to longer distances.
“Today was very valuable,” men’s cross country coach Steve Dolan said. “So the three guys we raced today have more experience in middle distance running on the track … They’re more middle distance oriented, so we wanted [them] to come out today and push themselves for four miles to work on their fitness for the fall and get stronger. And I definitely think all three guys accomplished that, so that was really good.”
Of the three athletes that laced up their shoes on the men’s side, sophomore Joseph “Tiago” Socarras and freshman Brody Watt made their collegiate debuts on the grass. Watt’s debut was the highlight of the race, as he finished 17th overall and first for the Red and Blue with an impressive time of 20:04.4.
Next, the Quakers take a trip to Bethlehem, Pa., on Oct. 2 to compete at the Paul Short Invitational hosted by Lehigh.
