GUEST BLOG: Like all good things

It had to end at some point.

The women's lacrosse team had not lost a conference game since its oldest players were juniors in high school, its youngest in middle school. “The Streak” spanned 34-games over six seasons and affected the careers of over 55 players.

But all that came to a screeching halt Wednesday, when the Quakers lost 11-7 to Princeton at Franklin Field.

I wasn’t at the game (though I heard most of it via the Princeton radio feed on the internet). So read Ari’s recap of the game for the “play-by-play.” I also won’t wax rhapsodic over the impressiveness of the streak. Penn athletics’ recap has that for you. But I do want to give some context on “The Streak” and its end yesterday.

Ironically, during my four years on the women's lax beat, I never once referred to the accomplishment as “The Streak.” The simple reason is that the Quakers only started threatening Harvard’s all-time Ivy streak of 36 this year. So before this year the streak wasn’t “an all-timer.” But on a deeper level, I personally felt the run of Ivy wins was more about each year’s team going 7-0 to win that year’s Ivy League title than about multiple years of dominance. Put another way, I got so accustomed to Ivy wins, that “The Streak” was almost like a given, a piece of background information.

(Apparently, the Quakers share my sentiments. According to this weekend’s preview: “[Penn coach Karin Brower] Corbett said the team never talked or thought about the streak as a group in preparing for games.”)

This season, however, “The Streak” has been the story of the year. Or at least that’s what the DP’s coverage reflects. Searching thedp.com’s archives, the first reference to the team’s streak (albeit with lowercase letters) was a column from Cal in September predicting the 2010-2011 sports year. To his credit he predicted:

The women’s lacrosse team’s undefeated Ivy streak will come to an end.
Good news first: the women’s lacrosse team will remain atop the Ivy League. But its four-year undefeated conference streak will end this year. It’s no coincidence that the streak was concurrent with a phenomenal class of athletes.

Penn got a taste of competition from Dartmouth in last year’s Ivy Championship game, though the Quakers eventually won 9-8 in the final minutes. And this year, Dartmouth has a large contingent of rising seniors and juniors returning.

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To be honest, I saw the streak ending too. The Quakers lost to an unranked foe for the first time since March of 2006 when they fall 8-5 to Johns Hopkins last month. And watching them in person I could tell that this year’s squad was not as dominant as the past four ones.

Though I've moved on from Philadelphia to Washington DC, I've been to two games this year. The first was the season opener against Drexel and the second was the shelling at No. 1 Maryland. The Drexel game was a sloppy affair, and the Quakers didn’t put the game away until a late 5-1 run. In the Maryland game, Penn got outplayed more than it had in any game I’ve seen since the 12-2 loss versus Northwestern in the 2007 NCAA Final Four. Anytime Maryland got the ball it would sprint down the field and fire off a shot immediately. It was the fastest and most efficient offense I’ve seen. And this year’s Penn team had no chance of stopping it.

Honestly, this year’s team just hasn’t looked as good as the team during the streak, especially without last year’s senior class. That does not mean this year’s senior class led by midfield Giulia Giordano isn’t a good one. But you can tell by watching the team that the departure of Ali DeLuca, Emma Spiro, Emily Szelest, Barb Seaman and the rest of the Class of 2010 left a huge hole that has not been completely filled.

So where does the loss leave the team for now? For one, if there was any slim chance before the loss that Penn might finally break through and win the national championship this year, I think that hope was mauled by the Tigers.

But what about the Ivy League title? Having your biggest rival end the most impressive accomplishment in program history is painful. But ironically, the Quakers should be happy the streak ended against Princeton instead of one of the other top-flight Ivy squads. The Tigers already lost to Harvard and play Dartmouth this upcoming Saturday. In fact, Penn is still in first place at 5-1 in the conference, with the Crimson, Big Green and Tigers all tied in second at 4-1. With tiebreakers over Dartmouth and Harvard – who still have to play each other – Penn will clinch at least a share of their fifth straight Ivy League title with a win Saturday at Brown (1-4).

Such a win would be fitting. Penn would join Harvard as the only Ivy teams to win five-straight Ivy League championships. And they would start another Ivy win streak against the Brown, original victim number one of The Streak.