Four Ivy League teams are receiving votes in this week's Sports Network Top 25 poll.
No. 22 Harvard (432 points), obvious choice. Best running back in the country, second best offense and a convincing win at Brown.
Princeton (50 points), right where they should be after two wins over quality Patriot League opponents.
Penn (8 points), I can even see this one, despite a loss to Villanova last week. Solid road win at then-ranked Lafayette.
But Columbia (8 points)? No way this team should be tied in the poll with the Quakers. A home win over Fordham and a squeaker over Georgetown aren't any reason to receive Top 25 votes. We'll see how many votes the Lions have after Princeton comes into town this week.
VILLA NOVA OUTCLASSED
So read the headline of The Pennsylvanian, the predecessor of today's Daily Pennsylvanian on Monday, Oct. 16, 1911, two days after Penn beat Villanova for the last time.
In case you missed that issue or couldn't spring for the three cents, here are some snippets from the recap.
Villa Nova could offer little resistance to the Varsity attack Saturday afternoon and the 22-0 score is hardly a fair comparison of the strength between the two teams. Had the first string backs been permitted to remain in the game, the total probably would have been doubled...
The rest of the backfield were in improved form. Mercer and Harrington are certain regulars and Barr is gaining experiences that ought to insure him his place. He handled his end of the forward pass in masterly fashion and aided greatly in the interference. He got punts off a trifle slowly...
The line played better than at any time and had little trouble with the visiting forwards...
The final count came in the last period when Barr caught a short unt on the thirty-yard line and eluded four tacklers before he was finally brought to earth behind the goal line. The punt-out was fumbled.
Here's what I gathered from it all:
Penn scored four five-point touchdowns for 20 points and was successfull on two of its four attempts at "goals" after the touchdowns. The punt-out was presumably part of the goal try.
The offense lined up as follows against the interference: A center, two guards, two tackles and two ends, a quarterback, a left halfback, right halfback and fullback. Not all that different from 2006.
It was not the style of the times to use a first name in referencing a player, even on first mention in the article. Nor was it the style for the author to have his byline atop the story.
And on a related note: The DP has certainly bucked the trends by increasing in size and decreasing in cost over the years. Three cents has become no cents, and that four-page paper has become 18 pages on slow news days and 10 on busy days.
Lastly, attempts to reach Scotty Williams for his recollections on that 1911 game were unsuccessful.
Harvard lost a second key component as a result of a preseason suspension, head football coach Tim Murphy announced.
Quarterback Liam O'Hagan was suspended five games for an unspecified violation of team rules. He joins captain and linebacker Matt Thomas, who was suspended indefinitely after an alleged assault on campus.
Murphy would not give specifics as to which rule his QB violated. However, it doesn't take much detective work to pin down exactly what sort of scandal we're talking about here.
See, a quick look at the Crimson roster reveals that O'Hagan hails from the football scandal capital of the world.
It's the Minneapolis suburb of Minnetonka, Minn., on the shores of the now infamous Lake Minnetonka. It was there one year ago that the NFL's Vikings set a new standard for aquatic escapades with their "sex boat" party featuring exotic dancers galore.
Vikings ringleader Fred Smoot got off easy, but if O'Hagan really did organize some seafaring shenanigans on the Charles, as any good scandal-ologist would surmise that he did, he was not so lucky.
Five games down the tubes. Not worth it for a night of fun with the fine, intelligent young women of Harvard University. A memorable evening of Latin and lingerie. For the more adventurous, a study in electromagnetism and sadomasochism.
But the Crimson should be OK, even without the captain of the U.S.S. Peep Show. As long as they don't catch Clifton Dawson with that Original Whizzinator.
Remember when Penn was just a Division I football program?
Life was sure simple then.
Then the Quakers moved to Division I-AA when that division was created in 1978.
But after 28 years, the leaders of the I-AA schools have had enough of being what they called "second-class citizens".
So in typical bureaucratese, the NCAA has decided to reclassify I-A and I-AA. They are now called...(drumroll, please):
""Football Bowl Subdivision"" -- (what used to be I-A)
and
"NCAA Football Championship Subdivision" -- (I-AA)
These names are just absolutely ludicrous, and I have a feeling that no one will use them, except on official news releases. I-A and I-AA worked because they were simple, short, and actually made sense. But the NCAA decided to mess with something that was not broken.
The presidents believe the new nomenclature, which becomes effective in December, more accurately distinguishes Division I institutions for purposes of governing football, the only sport for which such a distinction is necessary. Members felt the old nomenclature inaccurately tiered Division I institutions in all sports, not just football, and produced instances in which media outlets and other entities incorrectly cited institutions as being Division I-AA in basketball or baseball, for example.
Just look at this quote from this press release announcing the change:
"All Division I institutions, regardless of whether they sponsor football, are in fact and should be referred to as Division I members," said Board Chair and University of Connecticut President Philip Austin. "The only reasons for labeling are the need to distinguish the two football subdivisions for the purpose of governing the sport and to maintain separate statistics. The Board is stressing that the nomenclature reflect the totality of the Division I membership whenever possible and that the subdivision labels be used sparingly. Still, there are instances in which we need to use them, and we feel the new labels are more accurate."
Amazing. But that's the NCAA
It's a comparison that Penn fans hope never becomes reality. But this basketball off-season has already been filled with three or four distractions that makes me worry about the team's chances in the upcoming season.
First there was Temple's unusually drawn-out courtship of former coach Fran Dunphy. Part of that was definitely Dunphy's true indecisiveness, but nonetheless it was almost surreal at times.
Then came the decision to hire former Brown coach Glen Miller over a man in former Quakers assistant Dave Duke, who the players seemed to support. Obviously, the players should not be picking their coach, but even Miller admitted in his introductory press conference that he had to work to win his new team over.
After a relatively quiet couple months, Penn was hit with the twin bombshells of Brown's Keenan Jeppesen's denied transfer application and David Whitehurst's apparent dismissal from Penn.
That Princeton team two years ago also came off a dominant Ivy season, hired a new coach, and had off-season personnel issues that continued for the last year. The Tigers struggled to one of the worst seasons in school history under Joe Scott, who finally has seemed to get the program under his control and going in the right direction after about a year and a half.
Penn should undoubtdedly be favored to win the Ivy title this year again. It's not worth worrying about a player that the team never had, and while Whitehurst played strong defensively, he was somewhat of a liability on the offensive end for much of last season. However, it will be on Miller and veterans Ibrahim Jaaber, Steve Danley and Mark Zoller to keep the team focused on playing and not on the distractions. And Miller certainly needs to get his team on his side if he hasn't already done it, so that this post can get laughed at in about seven months.
Over my three years of writing for The Daily Pennsylvanian and its summer counterpart, I've been to enough press conferences to know what they're about.
So when I covered the Philadelphia 2016 Olympic bid press conference at 30th Street Station (not the best choice for acoustics, by the way), I knew what I was getting into.
This would not be an honest assessment of the city's chances for landing the U.S. bid. It would be more of a pep rally -- 20 minutes of self-congratulations on their 81 percent approval for the bid in a survey of local residents.
But one quote, which didn't really fit into the Summer Pennsylvanian story, just sounded so laughable that it merited mention somewhere.
Philadelphia 2016 co-chair Joseph Torsella on the strengths and weaknesses of the bid:
"I know what I think the strengths are," Torsella said. "I don't have a sense of what our weaknesses are."
I do.
While I've had seven days to put this list together, I only had to spend about seven seconds on it. So here you go Mr. Torsella. Maybe this will refresh your memory.
1. Existing financial problems and one of the nation's most overwhelming tax burdens.
2. Public transportation that features a pair of shabby subway
lines that go virtually nowhere and a bus system that criss-crosses the city in an illogical and poorly-explained fashion. And by the way, out-of-towners are used to being able to buy tokens at every stop. Just a thought.
3. An airport that can't handle the traffic it already gets.
4. Two stadia already publicly financed in the last decade, neither of which is an Olympic Stadium.
5. One of the nation's higest crime rates among large cities and a rising murder rate.
6a. Unions that will ensure construction for Philadelphia 2016
is done by 2026. And all venues will be fitted with unneccesary pipes to keep the plumbers' union happy.
6b. Special interest groups that will ensure construction for Philadelphia 2016 is done by 2036. Do you see a ballpark at 12th and Vine? Remember why not?
Hope that helps jog your memory. If I had another seven seconds, maybe I would think of some more. But I don't. I'm too busy enjoying the prospect of good old No. 7.
7. Philadelphia sports fans + Olympics = Booing national anthems.
Especially France's.
We've written a few articles over the last year about how many potential 2006 NBA draftees Penn has played against recently. Now we know how many were actually drafted last night -- nine.
They are:
LaMarcus Aldridge, Texas (2nd overall)
Shelden Williams, Duke (5th)
Randy Foye, Villanova (7th)
J.J. Redick, Duke (11th)
Kyle Lowry, Villanova (24th)
Mardy Collins, Temple (29th)
P.J. Tucker, Texas (35th)
Craig Smith, Boston College (36th)
Daniel Gibson, Texas (42nd)
The Quakers faced eight of the nine players in this past season, and while they have not beaten any of these players aside from Collins' and Foye's respective freshman teams, it was a credit to Fran Dunphy and his staff that Penn, which has not had an NBA player play for it since Ira Bowman in 1996.
We can only hope that new coach Glen Miller continues this trend, and with a series already scheduled against perennial power North Carolina, it looks like Penn is on its way to another tough schedule.
Now if the Quakers could only win one of these games once in a while...
I just got back from Center City, where Philadelphia Mayor John Street held a press conference with members of the United States Olympic Committee touting the city's bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics.
As far as projecting an image of this city goes, they could not have picked a better backdrop: the heart of LOVE Park, a tree-lined Ben Franklin Parkway and the Philadelphia Museum of Art on an overcast but warm spring afternoon. But there are plenty of questions to deal with, chief among them whether the city has the infrastructure and political will to host the world's biggest sporting event.
Two of the people charged with answering those questions have close Penn connections: President Amy Gutmann and Comcast Executive Vice President David L. Cohen, a Penn trustee. Both were present and seated in the front row during the press conference, as they are members of the local bid committee.
"I think that Penn would obviously play a role not only from a facility perspective but also from the perspective of leadership, civic leadership and idea leadership around the Olympic Games," Cohen said.
It is great exposure for Penn to be involved in the bid, and you can be sure that many of Penn's sports facilities will host Olympic events -- especially whatever new ones come in the Postal Lands development. And you can bet that there will be a lot of talk about redeveloping Franklin Field as an Olympic-quality track and field venue.
"We'll be a partner in this whole Philadelphia effort, and so we'll be a part of what makes us be able to put together a full package for the Olympics," Gutmann said.
Penn fencing coach Dave Micahnik, a three-time Olympian, was there as well, and was very excited about the prospect of the Games coming here.
"The thing about having the Olympics -- it changes the city," he said. "You become an Olympic city, a place that's remembered forever as being somewhat special."
Stay tuned -- not just for more information in Friday's DP, but as the bid process continues in the months and years to come.
Congratulations are certainly due to 2001 Brown graduate Cory Gibbs, who was selected to the 23-man United States World Cup soccer team. He's the first Ivy League graduate to make the U.S. team since it re-emerged on the international scene in 1990, when it qualified for its first World Cup in 40 years.
Now those of you who follow soccer closely are well aware that the roster announcement came out on Tuesday. Why, then, did it take me so long to make this post?
Because no one I talked to knew whether Gibbs actually was the first Ivy League to make the U.S. World Cup squad in the modern era. I sent an email to perhaps the most influential person in American soccer, Columbia University economics professor and newly elected U.S. Soccer Federation president Sunil Gulati, and he suspected it was true but wasn't sure. I called the U.S. Soccer Federation and no one there knew. I wrote to some other sportswriters I've met with Ivy League connections and none of them knew.
I called the Ivy League office and they didn't know, which I think reflects rather badly on them because this is pretty important, especially given the global reach of the Ivy League's academic reputation and Gibbs' stature with the U.S. team. This is the world's game, after all.
I finally got the answer I was looking for by going through all the rosters from the 1990, 1994, 1998 and 2002 teams, and searching for where all the players went to college. It didn't take too long, but it's not the sort of information that soccer's governing bodies keep track of because the rest of the world doesn't care about college sports the way Americans do.
I did manage to find a few other Ivy League connections to the world's premier sporting event along the way:
-- Former Columbia football coach Aldo Donelli, who led the Lions to their only Ancient Eight title in the sport in 1961, was the only American player to score a goal in the 1934 World Cup in Italy, although he went to college at Duquesne.
-- Former U.S. goalkeeper Juergen Sommer, who was on the 1994 World Cup team, used to be an assistant coach at Harvard. Bruce Murray, a forward on the 1990 team (the first American team to qualify for the World Cup in 40 years), is an assistant coach with the Crimson now.
-- On the current team, head coach Bruce Arena is a 1973 Cornell graduate. One of his assistants on the 2002 team, Dave Sarachan, was the head coach of the Big Red from 1989 to 1997 after graduating from Cornell in 1976.
The World Cup kicks off in Germany on June 9; the first game for Gibbs and the United States is against the Czech Republic is June 12.
Nothing gets a college sports fan excited like the NCAA Tournament selection show. OK, so maybe the NCAA tennis selection show isn't quite as exciting as its basketball counterpart in March, but for Penn fans, there was some genuine interest.
The women's team, which finished second in the Ivy League with a 6-1 record, earned a spot in the May tournament. The No. 45 Quakers will face No. 30 Tennessee in Atlanta. If Penn wins the May 12 contest, the Quakers will face either Southland Conference champ Southeastern Louisiana or host Georgia Tech, the ACC winner. Ancient Eight winner Harvard will face Purdue in the first round.
Meanwhile, the men's team, which split the Ivy League title with Brown and lost in a playoff, was snubbed by the NCAA selection committee. The Bears move on to face Notre Dame in the first round while Penn will be staying home. It's a tad disappointing considering the Quakers (18-6) had a better overall record than Brown (17-8) and a better mark than half of the tournament field.
Army (10-15) benefited from the Patriot League's automatic bid, while Alabama (14-11), Wake Forest (14-10), Minnesota (13-12), Michigan (13-11) and South Carolina (14-14, and losers to Penn) all received at-large bids.
Penn really should have two teams vying for a chance to move on to Stanford's Taube Tennis Center, the site of the final rounds. Unfortunately the NCAA didn't see it that way.
I have a confession to make: I snuck into the Palestra yesterday. Okay, so I had some help doing it, and I was there for a decent reason, to pick up something I left there by accident a few days ago. But when my business was done, I decided to linger for a few minutes and think about all the time I've spent there over the last four years.
I hope every Penn fan gets the chance at some point to be in the Palestra when it's empty. Sure, it's special when there's a full house and the fans are going crazy, but the meaning of the place really comes through when there aren't any other people around.
Because, as longtime custodian Dan Harrell will tell anyone who asks him, the building is never truly unoccupied. I used to not really believe in ghosts, and for the most part I still don't. When it comes to the Palestra, though, I agree with Harrell that there's something in the rafters watching over the players and fans below.
As I stood there yesterday looking up, I couldn't help but remember some of the big plays and big games I've seen over the two seasons in which I've had the privilege of covering the Big 5 for the DP. Three moments stand out above all the rest, occasions which symbolize the special nature of games in "college basketball's most historic gym."
The first came at the end of the 2004 Big 5 classic game between Temple and Villanova. The game was a stereotypical City Series clash, with rugged defense and poor shooting for both sides, exemplified by Villanova's 3-of-17 first half from beyond the arc. With 1:10 to go in the second half, the score was tied at 50-50.
As Temple's Mardy Collins drove to the basket, Villanova's defense collapsed on him. But that left Dustin Salisbery wide open on the left side of the arc, and Collins dished to Salisbery for a wide-open three. When the ball went through the net, the Temple fans roared as if they were at an Italian soccer game, where the scarcity of goals makes reactions even more frenzied. It seemed so strange for the Owls to be on the verge of beating the far more talented Wildcats, and yet it was also somehow entirely predictable.
The second moment came just over two months later when Villanova squared off against Saint Joseph's in the annual Holy War grudge match. While the aforementioned Temple-Villanova game was rightly hawked as the top Big 5 game that season, 'Nova-St. Joe's simply blows all the other City Series rivalries out of the water. It has all the elements: Atlantic 10 vs. Big East, mostly local student body vs. more geographically diverse student body, city vs. suburbs (even though a significant part of the St. Joe's campus is on the other side of City Avenue), and lots of people who know people at the other school.
Yet when the two teams get together at the Palestra, it seems as much like a family reunion as a sibling rivalry. That was never more on display than at the beginning of the second half, when the full house was using college basketball as a distraction from the Eagles' loss in the Super Bowl a day earlier. Amid the din, public address announcer John McAdams announced that a set of car keys had been turned in to the scorers table, and would the owner please come pick them up.
A game on national television between two teams which at that point had reasonable dreams of the NCAA Tournament, and here was an announcement about a lost set of car keys?
It was a perfect Palestra moment. It wouldn't happen at one of the NBA-style palaces that many big-time teams play in across the country, much less the actual NBA arena that Villanova calls its second home. But it made complete sense.
The third moment came at this past season's Holy War. The house was split right down the middle, as if a can of red paint had been thrown on one end and a can of blue paint had been thrown on the other end. And it was once again absolutely deafening -- even the normally wine-and-cheese Villanova fans were really into it. There were points at which the "Let's go St. Joe's" and "Let's go Nova" chants were in such a perfect rhythm that everyone was chanting "Let's go" at the exact same time, and the rest was just an unintelligible mass of sound.
But even with all the shouting, there was one question that nobody had an answer to. With McAdams' passing last summer and Rich Kahn only announcing Penn games and the Big 5 classic, who would be behind the public address? For most of the pregame warmups, there weren't any announcements. Then the answer came a few minutes before tipoff, when the unmistakable voice of former Big 5 Executive Secretary and current Phillies PA man Dan Baker boomed out over the speakers.
"The Philadelphia Big 5 is selling merchandise on the concourse of the Palestra," he said.
I've never heard the Palestra as quiet as it was at that moment. Of course, it got louder real fast.
"Tonight's contest, ladies and gentlemen, marks just the fourth time in Philadelphia Big 5 history that two undefeated teams will meet one another to determine the Big 5 champion," he said, as the crescendo grew. "The winner of tonight's game will be crowned not only the winner of the 2005-2006 Big 5 title, but will be able to say they won the Big 5 championship for its 50th anniversary season."
Even the objective among us had goosebumps.
I will close with one more anecdote, which was the first time I realized just what the Palestra is about. It was way back during my freshman year, at the first Penn-Princeton game I ever attended. The first points of the game were scored on a slam dunk by Ugonna Onyekwe. Even now, after those Holy Wars and all the other big games I've teen to, I swear that I have never heard the Palestra louder than it was at that moment.
And I thought of all this when the place was empty.
Congrats to Cornell offensive lineman Kevin Boothe, who was taken in the sixth round (176th overall pick) in yesterday's NFL draft by the Oakland Raiders.
Today, a pair of Princeton Tigers -- defensive back Jay McCareins (Arizona Cardinals) and tight end Jon Dekker (Pittsburgh Steelers) -- joined him, at least for now, on NFL rosters. Yale quarterback Jeff Mroz signed with the Dallas Cowboys.
Brown running back Nick Hartigan will likely sign with a team soon.
But no Penn players are expected to be signed this year. And according to this story, the squad has no major pro prospects in next year's senior class.
Very recently, Penn used to have a couple players sign with NFL squads every year. Now the team will likely go two straight years without having a player make an NFL squad. It's interesting how the squad's drop in pro prospects has coincided with its drop in Ivy League wins.
The big game on campus today -- the only game, in fact -- was the Penn tennis team's playoff match against Brown to determine which of the Ivy League's co-champions would get an automatic berth to the NCAA Tournament. Though it took place in the relatively out-of-the-way Levy Tennis Pavilion (which is actually quite a nice venue, if you've never been), there was plenty of buzz in the building.
Penn lost two of the three doubles matches, and was thus down a point in the first-to-four-points format entering the singles matches. So with Penn up 3-2, all the fans (and there were a decent number, actually) headed over to the two auxiliary courts, and were stacked ten deep at times in front of the few transparent areas of the court curtain.
After Brown's Chris Lee beat Penn's Brandon O'Gara at No. 6, the match was tied at three wins apiece, and as the players shook hands Quakers freshman No. 5 Justin Fox was down 6-4, 5-3 to Bears senior Luke Tedaldi.
Fox battled back to 5-4, then made it a straight-up duel for survival in the next game. Something like four deuces went by, then Fox went down a point again.
The Brown players waited on the next court over, crouched like sring-loaded missiles in an action figure's gun. After a few exchanges from the baselines, Fox hit a forehand into the net. The match was over, and the Bears sprinted to Tedaldi's side to celebrate a 4-3 win. It was the same score by which Penn beat Brown 22 days ago, and Brown's second win over Penn this season.
"Everyone was really motivated for this match," Bekker said. "One or two points could decide the whole match."
Both teams' names will be engraved on the elegant trophy that was on display at the front desk of Levy Pavilion during the match. Penn might still get an at-large bid to the Tournament, with Bekker quoting odds of that happening at "50-50, maybe."
It's still a better chance than the losing team would have in an Ivy League basketball playoff, given that it's never happened and probably won't for quite a while. But it should come as no surprise that a conference with the Ivy League's demographics merits an at-large bid in a sport played most often in country clubs.
And considering that the Quakers won at least a share of the Ivy League title for the first time in 35 years, even to be on the bubble is quite some progress.
"We've turned this program around," coach Mark Riley said. "Now we need to take this little bit of a bitter taste into next year to help us be better."
It might also serve Penn well if its name gets called in the selection show Wednesday evening.
For the second year in a row, the Ivy League had exactly one man picked in the NFL Draft. Last year, Harvard quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick went in the seventh and final round to St. Louis.
This year, the man was Cornell offensive lineman Kevin Boothe. The behemoth (6-5, 316) was picked by the Oakland Raiders as the seventh pick of the sixth round (176th of 255 overall).
That means that players like Brown running back Nick Hartigan, Yale quarterback Jeff Mroz and Princeton corner Jay McCareins went undrafted. They, like former Penn corner Duvol Thompson, can still sign with a team.
Elsewhere, the Penn Relays coverage on NBC was a joke. I understand that it got preempted by overtime hockey and that the local news probably should not get pushed back for an event taped a day earlier. But in the 30 minutes that NBC showed the Relays, we had an introduction, a commercial, a race, a commercial, a highlight of another race, a commercial, a race, a commercial, a two-minute wrap-up, and a five-minute sportsdesk update.
In the 30 minutes, we saw about five minutes of running (to go along with a five-man broadcast crew) I understand cutting back coverage in the last few years, but to me, this seemed like a waste.
From the moment he sat down in the press room today, Tyree Washington made it clear that he had not forgotten about last year's 4x400-meter relay -- especially the last 150 or so meters -- in the USA vs. the World competition.
"For me, it was just a matter of redemption," he said. "It was a matter of revenge."
There was no baton drop this time. Although the race was close for a while, especially heading into the anchor leg, in the end it wasn't close. Washington's USA Blue, anchored by Wallace Spearmon, crossed the line first in 3:00.09, and USA Red was right behind in 3:00.13. Jamaica came in fourth, behind a World All-Stars team that included 2004 Olympic gold medalist in the 400m hurdles Felix Sanchez of the Dominican Republic.
As the leadoff man, Washington came to the starting blocks with his competitive juices fully flowing.
"I want to break your back -- it's nothing personal against you, but I want to break your back," he said. "I don't care if my mother's out there, it makes no difference to me."
USA Blue's anchor was Wallace Spearmon, no stranger to Franklin Field after four years running for Arkansas. He described his first trip as a pro as "a whole different atmosphere."
"In college, you might have two or three guys who are great and you might have another guy who's just decent," he said. "But being put out there with four great guys on the same team and another four great guys from other countries, it's just the best of the best."
For the fourth time in the seven-year history of the USA vs. the World competition, the United States swept the top spots in all the sprint competitions. I say sprint competitions specifically because for the first time, there was a USA vs. the World men's distance medley relay, which Kenya A came back to win by .07 seconds over USA Blue. USA Blue's anchor was Bernard Lagat, who won a silver and a bronze medal in Athens just months after becoming an American citizen.
In the women's sprint medley relay, Lauryn Williams brought the house down for a second time with a blistering 200-meter leadoff leg. USA Blue set a new world record in the event with its final time of 3:37.16, beating last year's record time of 3:37.42.
The USA Blue men's 4x100 team, by the way, had its victory reinstated after an appeal, as a four-judge panel decided no violation had occured.
The biggest rout of the day came in the women's 4x400m relay, as USA Blue beat second place Jamaica by more than three seconds. Sanya Richards ran a 49.8 second anchor leg, the only person in that race to crack the 50-second barrier.
Richard said the weather, which really was spectacular all three days, gave her a boost.
"It makes a huge difference, especially mentally," she said. "You can visualize the race and run it exactly how you see it in your mind."
So that wraps up our coverage of the 112th Penn Relays Carnival on The Buzz. Thanks for reading along, and we'll see you back at the track next year.
Close to 50,000 people turned out today for the Penn Relays at Franklin Field -- about 20 of them were Penn students.
It's a shame that more students didn't take a study break on such a beautiful day and head down to the Relays. But you can't blame them.
First, the athletic department does absolutely nothing to promote the event to students on campus. This is not a surprise, however, as the school never promotes any of its events to students.
But if that wasn't enough, the University charges students the full price of admission to the Relays on Saturday ($20 for general admission). This is ridiculous for a number of reasons, the biggest of which is that Penn students pay tuition that funds a large chunk of the athletic department. Also, there are always a couple thousand seats that go unsold. Why not sell those at a discount to the closest customers, Penn students?
They're called the Penn Relays for a reason -- this is the University's event. Too bad the school has no interest in having students show up.
Courtney Jaworski had no doubt that his team belonged in the men's 4x800-meter Championship of America race. But a collision after John Guzman handed the baton to Bryan Scotland for the second leg left the Quakers way behind the pack.
They ended up in 12th place out of the 13, with a final time of seven minutes, 32.61 seconds.
"Mentally it's hard, physically it's hard to do that and then get your body back up afterwards," said Jaworski, who ran the anchor leg. "If that didn't happen, I think we would have been in there, but once that happened it was realy hard to get up to speed mentally."
Oral Roberts won the race in 7:18.74, giving the Golden Eagles their first Championship of America in their first ever trip to the Penn Relays. Villanova finished second in 7:19.06.
The news wasn't all bad for Jaworski, though. As one of the Penn track team's senior captains, he was honored in a ceremony in the infield earlier this afternoon. Getting that kind of recognition in front of today's announced crowd of 49,771 -- the second largest Saturday crowd ever, and there were plenty of empty seats in the upper deck -- is a nice treat.
So too is the weather, which has been spectacularly rain-free for all three days of the relays. Jaworski picked a good year to be a senior.
By their own admission, the runners on the Penn women's 4x800 team weren't supposed to be in the Championship of America race.
Gwen Harris, however, thought otherwise.
"Our best relay of the whole championships is this one," she said.
The coach was right. Penn came in fifth, and for the third time in two days Harris was exultant on the infield.
The first occasion was for Thursday's distance medley relay, in which the Quakers also placed fifth. And like that race, the four runners in the 4x800 -- Tina Morrison, Dana McCurdy, Jesse Carlin and anchor Stacy Kim -- had never run together before.
McCurdy put Penn into third place at one point, and Carlin and Kim were able to stay there for quite a while. But Kim got passed coming around the last turn of the final lap, so Stanford took third and Georgetown took fourth. Texas won the race in 8:31.60, just 0.23 seconds ahead of Tennessee. Penn's final time was 8:40.36.
"It was really exciting," Morrison said. "We didn't know what to expect, but I think everybody just went out there like they were out for blood."
Carlin certainly did. She's usually a 400m runner, but today ran two laps around the track instead of one.
"It's so much harder, but it's the same strategy," she said. "I just go out as fast as I can and hold on, see who has the most guns -- you're dying at the end, but the day you don't die, you're going to do amazing."
Kim, who doesn't normally run the 800 meter distance either, admitted that she was "really nervous" as Carlin approaced with the baton.
But she and her teammates certainly gave it their all.
"It's the Penn Relays, but it's also still our home court," Morrison said. "Out of all the times to do something, this is it"
There's really only one event for which the winner can claim the title 'fastest man in the world.' That's the 100-meter dash.
Today relays attendees got a real treat in seeing Asafa Powell, the reigning fastest man. Did they even need to run the race? They did, and Powell blew away the competition in 10.10 seconds, just one hundredth off Carl Lewis' 1983 Relays record. So if you blinked, you probably missed it.
Powell was a good seven meters ahead of anyone else at the finish line. That might not seem like a lot in most races, but in this one where the whole thing is over in 10 seconds, that's an eternity.
Just for comparison, Austin Leary, 76, won the men's masters (75-plus) in 17.36. That's still pretty fast.
As always, the USA vs. the World races draw the most attention here at the relays. Today's men's and women's 4x100 races were no exception.
The USA women, anchored by Lauryn Williams, had little trouble keeping the event in American hands (the Jamaicans in 2002 is the only time in the seven-year history of the race the U.S. as not won) comfortably in 42.81, the fourth fastest time run here. The fans, as you could bet, were on their feet with the "USA" chants.
On the men's side, things were a little more interesting. Justin Gatlin's USA Blue team ran the fastest race, 38.33, but will not claim the title. Leonard Scott botched the handoff to Shawn Crawford on the third leg by completing the handoff outside the mandated zone. That disqualified the Blue, meaning the Americans' second squad, USA White, oficially won with its 38.72 race. Wallace Spearmon's USA Red team finished third in 38.78.
Elsewhere Louisiana State has two new plaques to take back to Baton Rouge, and some major bragging rights in the 4x200. Both the men and women took their respective races today. Brooklynn Morris, who anchored the women's team interestingly comes from an athletic family. Her mother was a sprinter at Michigan State and her Tom father played football for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
Holmwood Tech celebrated again with a win in the high school boy's 4x800.
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