With Penn Relays drawing nearer, fans and spectators of track and field are prepared to once again be treated to one of the fiercest rivalries in sports.
Unfortunately for the rest of the sporting world, the matchup between the United States and Jamaica on the track is also one of the most underrated.
Though the world takes note every four summers when runners like Usain Bolt and Tyson Gay take part in the Summer Olympics, the rivalry between two of the greatest track and field teams goes far beyond the spectacle of the world’s greatest two-week sporting event.
However, the casual sports fan may not realize that the United States and Jamaica do battle every single year in Philadelphia at Penn Relays.
Yet as athletes from across the globe descend on Penn’s campus for this year’s Relays, teams comprised of Americans and Jamaicans will once again be out in full force.
While both the men’s and women’s side of the college- and Olympic-level events have seen dominant performances from various athletes of a variety of nationalities, the United States and Jamaica are, without a doubt, the most dominant forces that consistently participate at Penn Relays.
Never is that as evident as when both nations field teams in the annual “USA vs. The World” races at Penn. Always competitive, the Americans and their friends from the Caribbean have put on quite a show of late.
In 2012, the United States swept the “USA vs. The World” races for the first time in the century-long history of the event. While dominant, the Americans were pushed to the brink by the Green and Yellow.
Last year, the American women’s quartet of Tianna Madison, Allyson Felix, Bianca Knight and Carmelita Jeter completed the 4x100-meter race in 42.19. Though the American ladies captured the victory in the race, the top force from the Caribbean was not far behind.
Led by two-time Olympic 100 champion Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, the Jamaicans finished second in the race by just over a second, clocking in at 43.31.
If the Americans are going to have an opportunity to replicate their perfect feat this weekend, both the men and women will need strong performances against tough Jamaican foes.
Fans in attendance this weekend are in luck, as a majority of the athletes comprising the two major powers in 2012 will return for the 2013 edition of the Penn Relays.
Additionally, this year’s spectacle will feature an equally intriguing high school lineup.
The Jamaican high school squads at Penn Relays are coming into the event with plenty of momentum. At the ISSA Jamaica Boys and Girls Championships, both sides finished with strong times that, if replicated at Franklin Field, could result in record-breaking marks.
Historically, the Jamaicans have dominated the High School Boys’ 4x100 Championship of America. Of the top 10 fastest times in the history of the event, a Jamaican team holds nine of those marks — the fourth-fastest time comes from a school from Trinidad and Tobago.
Regardless, the American boys have consistently combated the Jamaicans’ dominance with strong times of their own in the 4x400 championship.
With California’s John Muir High School and Long Beach Poly and Maryland’s Northwestern High School participating, this weekend is sure to feature a dramatic contest between the United States and Jamaica.
Now is the time for the casual sports fan to forget about the Olympics and embrace the American-Jamaican rivalry for what it is: a recurring sports gift based on passion and national pride that never fails to provide entertainment, especially at Penn Relays.
The 119th edition of the Penn Relays - the oldest and biggest track meet in the United States - will be broadcast live from Franklin Field on Saturday, April 27th, by NBC from 1-3 p.m. EST.
NBC had originally planned to air the meet live from 1:30-3, but announced last week that it was extending its coverage. This new time slot will cover most of the USA vs. the World relay races, which have featured star athletes like Usain Bolt and Allyson Felix in the past.
From 3-5 p.m., live coverage of the Penn Relays will switch over to NBC Universal as the prestigious meet, which spans the entire weekend, comes to an end.
In this week's edition of Penn Sports Plus, we sat down with Parth Patel, the senior co-captain of the Penn Roller Hockey Club, to find out more about the team:
How long has the Penn Roller Hockey team been around?
Patel: We started back in 1995, so it’s been around for a while. There are a lot of people that I don’t know but the cool thing is that we have a pretty big alumni network and they stay on the listserv, so they’re around and you hear from them every once in a while.
The Philadelphia Collegiate Roller Hockey League was started by a guy named Brendan Brennan in 1998 at the Class of 1923 Rink. It was an invitational tournament, about a six or so team tournament. And from there they turned it into a league and it’s expanded to about 18 teams now.
We keep joking that the cup is named after him, it’s called the Brennan Cup, he started the club but in our 15 years Penn has never won it. We’ve got a shot this year, we’ve kind of snuck into the top part of the standings and everyone is joking around that this might be the year.
What initially drew you to play for the team?
Patel: I started playing because I liked hockey, but I think if you want to be part of a team that gets along, hangs out outside of the games and practices, I think this is a good club. The undergraduate group is pretty close, you have a lot of alumni, you have a lot of grad students and everyone is close and everyone gets along. We’re a fun, goofy group and we don’t take anything too seriously either. What drew me in is that you’ve got a team that you can still be a part of and play competitively but also have a good time and it’s not that structured. We have cool jerseys, too.
Do most players have previous roller hockey experience?
Patel: I think for a lot of players on the team, everyone watches hockey. We welcome all levels, so some students have played ice before, played roller before, played just street hockey before, maybe even played floor hockey or not had an skating experience. So we take everyone on, so we have a whole range of players.
Are there any big differences between roller hockey and ice hockey?
Patel: It’s very similar to ice hockey in that all the equipment is pretty much the same. The differences are there are no offsides, it’s 4-on-4 instead of 5-on-5, and there is limited body checking.
When is the main part of your season?
Patel: The season starts in October, and we play almost every Sunday. As of right now, we’ve played 13 games on our Tier 1 team, and that was the end of the regular season last week. We play Villanova this weekend in the semifinals. There are about 13 games in the regular season, then in April it kind of gears up and you’ve got playoffs. There are going to be two rounds since four teams make the playoffs.
How do you guys feel about your chances going into the playoffs?
Patel: St. Joe’s is actually a roller hockey powerhouse in this area. We hadn’t beat them since 2011, but we beat them last weekend. It was a huge deal because they won the championship last year, they went 20-0 and this season they started out 11-0. We just beat them in overtime last Sunday, so hopefully we’ve planted a little seed of doubt in their mind.
Where does the team play games and practice?
Patel: We play all of our games at this place called Marble Sports Arena, and that’s right outside of Philly so we actually have to carpool out. It’s about a 20-25 minute drive and we play all of our games there, we try to practice there but if we can’t get practice time we go to Flyer Skate Zone, which is the Flyers practice facility. They have a roller rink next to their ice rink so we’ve had practices there in the past, alongside the Flyers so it’s pretty fun.
Penn senior distance runner Megan Powell gives us an inside look at Penn track & field as the Relays await...
This past weekend the track team traveled to Princeton for the Larry Ellis Invitational Friday and Saturday. For a lot of sports at Penn, being good in the Ivy League does not translate to the rest of the NCAA Division I. For track, this is NOT the case; the Ivy League is one of the most competitive conferences in the country, and hosts some of the top athlete entries that go on to compete in the NCAA Championships. That being said, any time we get to compete against other Ivy League teams it is a great opportunity to gauge the field and get some great results. This was especially true this past weekend since the competition was held at the very place where the Heptagonal Ivy League Championships will be held in a couple of weeks, at Weaver Stadium in Princeton May 4th and 5th.
There were a lot of impressive performances moving up in the Penn record books and taking good places, with one notable race by junior Chelsey Delaney, who keeps getting better each week, with a PR time of 4:30.82 in the 1500m, which roughly translates to a 4:50 mile (that’s FAST).
For the men’s team, the 4x100-meter relay team started Saturday’s events off to a thrilling start, by just edging out Princeton’s team by one-hundredth of a second for a time of 42.00, with the team of Seck Barry, Mason Smith, Kyle Webster, and Chad Payne. Many other Quakers had career bests and placed at the top of the competition on both the track and field, as they continue to gear up for the final weeks of competition ahead.
Some Penn athletes also traveled to Widener to compete. There, Conner Paez continued his compelling comeback to running by improving five seconds from his first 1500m race back with a time of 4:14.44. Paez’s story of fierce commitment has been so inspirational to the running community he was chosen as LetsRun.com’s Inspirational/Blue Collar Runner of The Week.
This time of year is always so dramatic with everything reaching its pinnacle - finals for school and continued hard training for the most important competitions of the season, compacted with the pressure of the Penn culture to find jobs and summer opportunities.
Still, the team is out there every day - rain, shine, or lacrosse balls flying - fighting until the end. We’re now looking forward to competing and volunteering at the famous Penn Relays as teams from all over the world come to our fair city this weekend. The Relays really are the most entertaining part of the regular season, with everything from top competition in collegiate events, to Olympic-standard competitors, to even a 75+ men’s 100m dash. It’s always been a privilege and sincere honor to wear the Penn ‘P’ on our chests during this event as every other team comes to our home turf, and it is sure to be a surreal experience for seniors waiting in the paddocks and cheering in the stands for the last time as current athletes.
In light of the Boston Marathon bombings that killed three and injured more than 170 people, the University has issued a statement calling security "a high priority at the Penn Relays" according to the Inquirer.
Penn Relays Director Dave Johnson told the Inquirer that "high-level talks involving various agencies were under way" and that officials hoped new restrictions would be known by early next week.
We'll have more on The Penn Relays' security restrictions as we learn more.
The accolades keep coming for Keiera Ray and Alyssa Baron.
Ray was announced as the third consecutive Penn player to receive Big 5 Rookie of the Year, while Baron took home first-team All-Big 5 honors for the third time.
Mike McLaughlin’s recruiting classes have produced for the Red and Blue recently, as Ray was following in the footsteps of Baron and sophomore forward Kara Bonenberger, who received the Rookie of the Year award the last two years.
To begin her freshman campaign, Ray was the Quakers’ backup point guard but started 27 games at the point after Meghan McCullough went down with a torn ACL. In 31 games, the freshman put up 10.6 points and 2.1 assists per contest, second on the team in both categories.
Baron, meanwhile, took over as captain at the start of the 2012-13 season and continued her success from her first two seasons. The junior guard led the Red and Blue with 14.1 points, 6.4 rebounds and 3.8 assists per game.
The duo combined to help Penn to an 18-win season, which included the Quakers’ first two postseason victories in program history.
Senior distance runner Megan Powell gives us an inside look at the Quakers' upcoming meet at the Larry Ellis Invitational in Princeton.
The Quakers are coming off of an exciting two weeks, which included hosting athletes from Cambridge and Oxford last week, and competing at George Mason for one of the biggest collegiate invitationals this past weekend. Before the Brits came to Philly, they lost a dual meet in which Penn teamed up with Cornell in to take the win. Great performances were had, with one of the most significant being Conner Paez’s return race after over a year and a half of intense PT and training following an accident that left him in recovery at the start of the 2011 school year.
Both teams enjoyed the great opportunity to get to know the Brits, which was especially interesting since Penn hosted athletes from the University of Birmingham in England just last year. Next year, Penn and Cornell will hold a dual meet against each other to form a team that will then go overseas to be hosted in return.
As for George Mason’s Invitational the team traveled to this past weekend, the hard work continued to pay off. Sophomore Heather Bong, who has had an increasingly impressive season thus far, had an incredible performance when she broke the eight-year-old 100m dash record with a time of 11.83 seconds, placing her at the top of the coveted Penn Track record board, and earning her 4th overall at the meet.
Fellow Sophomore Tom Timmins also continued to impress with a a victory in the 400 meter hurdles with a time of 52.23 seconds. His time puts him at number 10 in the all-time Penn record books, which is no small feat considering he is one of only three Penn athletes to crack the all-time in that event in over 20 years.
Both teams will travel to Princeton for the Larry Ellis Invite this weekend, which, for some, will be their last opportunity to race this season. The season is gearing down with a few last intense meets ahead. Still, training continues with tough workouts and weekly lifts in conjunction with morning practices and traveling for weekend meets- the life of a track and field athlete is not to be underestimated. Everyone is looking forward to the massive event that is Penn Relays in the next two weeks, which is followed by our Heptagonal Ivy League Championship, and then ECACs/IC4As for those who qualify (which is looking to be good company considering the impressive performances the team has seen this season so far).
While most of Penn's campus engaged in activities relating to Fling, some of the school's spring athletes were not as fortunate over the weekend. With the Ivy League season in full swing for most sports this time of year, this weekend included a number of contentious matchups, including several against ranked opponents. For recaps of all of the action from the past few days, here's this week's edition of Weekend Wrap:
Baseball:
Entering its first division action of the conference season, the Penn baseball team looked to get off to a good start against arch-rival Princeton. The Quakers, however, gave up seven runs to the Tigers in each of the four weekend contests. Although Penn salvaged a split of Saturday's games, Princeton swept Sunday's doubleheader.
Despite starting the Ivy League season 0-3, the Penn men's tennis team returned to Philadelphia this weekend after a five-game road trip. Against No. 70 Dartmouth on Saturday, freshman Blaine Willenborg saved the Quakers by winning his singles match in three sets to give Penn the 4-3 victory. On Sunday, the Red and Blue dropped a heartbreaker to No. 19 Harvard, 4-3.
In a rematch of last season's Ivy title game, the Penn women's lacrosse team avenged its stinging defeat with an 8-7 victory on Friday. The Quakers were led by senior Caroline Bunting's hat-trick, including her game-winning goal with less than eight minutes to play. The Red and Blue are one step closer to a conference championship, and will face rival Princeton on Wednesday.
Though the Penn men's lacrosse team began its game against Harvard strongly on the offensive end, the team could not keep the momentum going. After falling behind, 6-3, the Quakers utilized a spirited comeback to force overtime. However, the comeback fell short, and Harvard's goal in OT downed the Quakers, 8-7.
At George Mason's Patriot Invitational, a unique scoring system allowed Penn's coaches to observe individual performances rather than focus on the team's overall performance. As a result, the Penn track and field team set several new school records in preparation for the Penn Relays. The most impressive of these performances may have come from sophomore Heather Bong, who set the new Penn school record in the 100-meter dash after clocking in at 11.83 seconds.
A wayward boat entered the Penn men's heavyweight rowing team's lane in their 2000-meter race on Saturday, and derailed the team's chances of legitimately competing. Despite the incident, the Quakers managed to finish in third place, just seconds behind Ivy rival Columbia. The Red and Blue protested the race, however it was to no avail. Penn will have a chance to avenge this weekend's race in just a few days though, as they take on the Lions and Yale in the Blackwell Cup.
After falling to Big 5 rival Villanova in a mid-week contest on Thursday, the Penn softball team rebounded to take three-out-of-four from Princeton over the weekend. The strong performance helped the Quakers make their grasp on first place in the Ancient Eight even firmer. While the Tigers managed to split Saturday's contests, the Quakers captured two decisive victories on Sunday to clinch the series.
Both of Penn's golf teams were in action over the weekend, and both the men and women capture fifth place in their respective tournaments. The women’s team headed to Suffern, N.Y. to take part in the Roar-EE Invitational, where they placed fifth out of ten teams in a close matchup. On the other hand, the men's team traveled to New Jersey to take part in the 54-hole Princeton Invitational against 13 other squads.
We're excited to announce our first ever Athlete of the Week, junior Penn men's lacrosse goalie Brian Feeney, whose career-high single-game save percentage (.833) helped the Quakers trump Brown for the first time in three seasons. Feeney's stats this spring speak for themselves, and now, so does he:
As if this season's success on the court wasn't enough, Penn women's basketball coach Mike McLaughlin got some more good news Tuesday night when he was inducted into the Pennsylvania Sports Hall of Fame.
This past season, McLaughlin's fourth with the Quakers, he guided his team to an 18-13 (9-5 Ivy) record, including the program's first-ever postseason victory.
Under McLaughlin, the Quakers have improved their win total every season. In the season before he took over the program, the Red and Blue had just nine wins.
McLaughlin is the fastest women's basketball coach to reach 400 career wins, and currently has a 451-132 (.774) record during his time as a head coach.
Before coaching at Penn, McLaughlin had an incredibly successful head coaching tenure at Holy Family University, his alma mater. His Holy Family teams posted 25 wins or more in every single one of McLaughlin's 14 seasons at the helm. The Tigers won 10 conference titles under McLaughlin, and he was named Conference Coach of the Year 13 times.
It appears that the old Big East's loss could be the Palestra's gain.
Sources close to the American Athletic Conference recently reported that the Palestra is one of the potential sites for the new conference's basketball tournaments moving forward.
The conference hit the hardest by realignment was, without question, the Big East. One of the premiere basketball leagues in the nation, the Big East was hampered when schools like Pittsburgh, Syracuse and Louisville decided to make the move to the ACC.
While the future looked bleak for the Big East for some time, the conference passed the point of no return when seven of 10 schools decided to form their own basketball conference.
Although the "Catholic Seven" schools and their new fellow league members will maintain the Big East name, a new conference, the American Athletic Conference (AAC), has taken form in response to the collapse of the former Big East.
Current Big East members Louisville, Connecticut, Cincinnati, Rutgers and USF will join up with Temple, Houston, Memphis, SMU and UCF in the AAC next season. Louisville and Rutgers will depart the conference in 2014, while three more schools, ECU, Tulane and Tulsa enter.
The 2013-14 school year will be the first in which the AAC participates in college athletics. Because the league can no longer play its college basketball tournaments at Madison Square Garden in New York (as was tradition in the old Big East), the AAC needs to find a new site.
According to Mark Blaudschun, AAC commissioner, Mike Aresco, is a fan of the historic nature of Penn's basketball arena. Moreover, the Palestra seats fewer than 9,000 people, and the small size of the venue would create an increased demand for tickets to the multi-day event.
Arenas in Hartford, Memphis and Orlando also remain in the mix.
While it remains to be seen if the Palestra is chosen as a site for the first AAC Tournament, the arena is certainly a possibility. The Ivy League does not have a conference tournament in either men's or women's basketball, and the Penn basketball seasons' typically end prior to the beginning of conference tournament season.
I asked current Robert Morris men’s basketball coach and former Penn basketball player Andy Toole (C’ 03) Thursday about his relationship with fired Rutgers coach Mike Rice, under whom he served as an assistant coach from 2007-10 at RMU while Rice was head coach. Toole declined comment twice on the scandal two days after Robert Morris athletic director Craig Coleman absolved Toole of any suspicious behavior while announcing the findings of an internal investigation into Rice’s practices there from 2007 to 2010.
But Toole did have a lot to say about the state of Robert Morris’s program following a memorable first-round NIT home win over Kentucky last month and why he never wants to go up against Penn again.
Daily Pennsylvanian: There was obviously a lot of talk about you going to Siena — now that you’re back at RMU, where do you see this program headed in the next couple of years?
Andy Toole: I’m very excited about the direction of this program. I think we have a quality group that’s coming back, so I think what we’ve done here in the last six years and try and continue to just push the envelope in terms of our recognition as a program.
DP What did it mean for your program to get that much-publicized win over Kentucky in the NIT?
AT: It was extremely exciting … For [the players] to get some of the recognition that they’ve gotten is terrific. Any time you can get that much national exposure, it helps in recruiting, it helps in notoriety and helps increase the brand of Robert Morris University basketball. That helps exponentially.
DP: What was it like coming back to the Palestra last season as an opposing coach?
AT: Extremely difficult, to be honest, because of so many great memories I had at the Palestra. Our first game there being Penn and Penn being a program that I root for very, very hard. And so now to have to spend days trying to prepare to beat that program and compete against that program, it’s something that was at times a little bit uncomfortable for me.
I know Jerome Allen and the coaching staff well and it’s a lot easier sometimes competing against people you don’t know, don’t respect or don’t like, so it was difficult experience for me for sure.
DP: Talk about your time with Penn basketball, what was it like being part of the Big 5 scene, playing under coach [Fran] Dunphy?
AT: It was an incredible experience. Being able to compete at a high level with a great group of teammates, a terrific coach in coach Dunphy and the rest of our coaches there at the Palestra with the support that the fans give in a great college basketball city like Philadelphia where you have so many great teams and a college basketball-hungry city. It was everything I could have asked for and more.
DP: Since you became assistant in 2007, what has been the trajectory of student interest in RMU?
AT: It’s increased a lot, it really has. When I first got here, athletics in general wasn’t a high priority, partially because some of the teams weren’t as successful. But we’ve been able to go to some NCAA tournaments and some NITs and interest in the program has really grown. And hopefully we’ll be successful in the years to come.
DP: Since you mentioned your discomfort playing Penn, is that something you wouldn’t want to do again?
AT: No, I would not want to do that again. I mean, I’d love to come play at the Palestra, but I don’t want to play Penn there.
Penn women’s lacrosse currently stands undefeated in the Ivy League with three conference games remaining. We have former senior sports editor Megan Soisson and associate sports editor John Phillips here to debate whether Penn wins the Ivy Crown this season.Megan Soisson: I really can’t see a situation where the women’s lacrosse team doesn’t win the Ivy League. Six years of championships teaches you how to get it done.
Of course, it also puts an enormous target on your back, but I think the Quakers can handle it.
They’re undefeated so far in Ivy play and definitely hitting their stride. It won’t be easy to beat Dartmouth and Princeton, and then Brown will put up a fight in an attempt to play spoiler.
But Karin Brower Corbett is easily one of the best coaches at Penn and she knows how to win. No doubt Penn at least gets a share of the Ivy title. Winning the Ivy League tournament, however, is a different story.
John Phillips: I agree wholeheartedly about the Ivy League tournament, as we’ve seen in recent years, but I wouldn’t be so quick to write it off that they’ll take home the Ancient Eight crown outright.
The Quakers have proven vulnerable so far this season, needing to go to overtime against opponents that, in years past, Penn would have rolled.
But this isn’t one of those teams. This team is more vulnerable than any other from the last six years, and will lose at least one of its next three Ivy games.
MS: I agree this is a vulnerable team. But in conversations I’ve had with Corbett, two things have stuck out:
1) The team prides itself on being gritty and fighting and never giving up. We saw it in wins against Vanderbilt and Cornell. Though in both of those games Penn relinquished big second-half lead, the Quakers found a way to win. Which brings me to my next point…
2) Corbett’s had to instill a new attitude in her team. The current players had never lost to Drexel before this season, and they certainly had never started out 0-3.
That’s cause for a change in attitude, especially in practice. Corbett said she was considering punishment for sloppy play at practice — likely increased sprints — and since then, they’ve been better.
And John, they went to overtime against Vanderbilt, a solid non-league team, and Cornell, who was ranked No. 10 at the time. I don’t think you could say they would have steamrolled those same teams.
JP: I agree that this is a gritty team, and everything that I’ve heard makes me root that their grit wins out. But being gritty is just another way of saying that they can’t play a complete game.
Penn should have put those Cornell and Vanderbilt games away early. They said so themselves after those games. And the reason they haven’t closed is because they don’t have that one player who can put a team on her back.
MS: That’s fair, John — they don’t have one player who can put the team on her back. Erin Brennan was the go-to last year, but they’ve had plenty of time to figure things out without her.
And Lucy Ferguson is a force in the cage who’s been really coming into her own as a leader on defense. I think the Quakers are beginning to peak right now and I believe they’ll do what they need to do in order to win another championship, even if it’s shared.
JP: They’ve had plenty of time to figure things out, and yet there is still no consistency in their offense. What happens when they’re down late in a close game? Who gets the ball then?
Verdict: You’re the head honcho until someone takes the title away from you and Penn women’s lax has ruled over the Ivy League for a long time. This one goes to Megan.
As spring finally approaches, several of Penn teams were out in full force over the weekend against some of the best competition the Ivy League, and in one case Great Britain, has to offer. From softball sweeps to tennis defeats, and everything in between, here is this week's edition of the Weekend Wrap:
Baseball:
After falling in the semifinals of the Liberty Bell Classic on Tuesday, the Red and Blue hit the diamond over the weekend in back-to-back conference doubleheaders. The Quakers split two games against Brown on Saturday, falling 9-0 in the opener before capturing the nightcap, 9-5. On Sunday, Penn was guided by strong pitching performances against Yale. The Quakers took the opener, 5-1, before losing the final game of the weekend in a pitchers dual, 1-0.
The Penn men's tennis team saw its road struggles persist over the weekend in the team's first back-to-back Ivy League action of the spring. On Saturday, the Quakers fell to Brown, 5-2. Sophomore Vim De Alwis and freshman Blaine Willenborg were the only two players to win singles matches. The following day, Penn fell to No. 54 Yale, 7-0. The Red and Blue are now 0-8 on the road, and 0-3 in Ivy play.
Matched up against Columbia, the Penn women's lacrosse team did what it does best: defeat the Lions. For the 17th consecutive meeting, the Quakers defeated Columbia, 13-8. Penn was led by a trio of hat-tricks from senior attack Caroline Bunting, junior midfield Shannon Mangini and junior attack Courtney Tomchik. The Red and Blue moved to 4-0 in the Ancient Eight with the victory.
Following a 17-2 embarrassment against Monmouth earlier last week, the Penn softball team was in desperate need of a gut-check against two tough Ivy opponents this weekend. Luckily, they got exactly what they needed. The Quakers swept Yale in two games on Saturday by a combined score of 16-0. In Providence, R.I., the next day, two more solid victories completed the successful weekend for Penn.
In its first Ivy League doubleheader of the season, the Penn women's tennis team split matches with Brown and Yale over the weekend. Despite several close contests, the Quakers eked out a 4-3 victory over the Bears at Levy Pavilion on Friday. On Saturday, No. 41 Yale visited Philadelphia, and defeated Penn, 5-2. The Red and Blue were led by sophomore Alex Ion, who won both of her singles matches this weekend.
Led by junior Zack Losco and sophomore attack Isaac Bock, the Penn men's lacrosse team throttled Brown over the weekend, 10-3. Losco had four points on two goals and two assists for the Quakers, while Bock managed to pull off a hat-trick. The win snapped the Red and Blue's two game losing streak overall, as well as a four game losing streak to the Bears.
The Penn track team joined forces with the track team from Cornell over the weekend in the schools' customary biennial meet. Paired together, the two Ivy schools took on a squad made up of athletes from Oxford and Cambridge. Penn helped the Ivy squad finish with 15 event victories on the men's side, and 14 event victories on the men's side. Gabrielle Piper captured first place in the 100-meter hurdles for the Quakers.
This week, we sat down with Doug Swift, an England native, and president of the Penn men’s rugby team, who discussed recent successes and the future of the fiercely competitve club sport.
How did you get into rugby?
Swift: So, I’ve been playing rugby since I was five, back in England. I played throughout Lower School, Middle School, and High School. After a gap year, when I realized I was going to come to America, I scouted out some of the schools I was applying to and it was an absolute bonus that Penn had a great program.
Being from England, most of the players that try rugby out in the States are football players or ex-football players. How do their skills translate in the game of Rugby?
Swift: There are certainly skills that do transfer over. But, you'd be surprised Americans are kind of wimpy. The tackle technique is more different than people give it credit for, and the fact that we don’t wear pads means that there is some adjustment. However, especially defensively the skills do transfer over.
So, you guys just played Brown this past weekend. What does your club look to do playing teams like Brown, Cornell, and Dartmouth who are more active in recruiting players?
Swift: I don’t know the specifics of each recruitment process, I’m sure that it is standardized across all club sports, keep in mind, these are still Club teams. But, certainly I know when I got my acceptance letter from Penn, and Billy (the team’s fly-half) as well, got a special letter from the rugby coach saying “we hope that you’ll come out and join the team”. Certainly, our recruitment needs some work.
How did the game turn out?
Swift: The game itself was a real moment of progression for the team. Having gone to Brown last year in the Ivy League and lsot by over 50 points to zip, to have them come here and [Penn] go down by six points is a testament to how far we’ve come in just that short time. And that’s all credit to those who have been working hard. But, yeah, schools like Dartmouth, it will be another year or two before we can compete at their level because of their recruitment capabilities.
What’s the next goal for Penn rugby, specifically, the next big event?
Swift: So having gone down to Brown last weekend, we now play for third place against Princeton, who lost to Dartmouth last weekend which will be this Saturday at Penn Park at three o’ clock. We hope to get a good turnout for that. After that, our 15’s season is over and then we enter the 7’s circuit. We play Nationals, the Collegiate Rugby Championships are June 1st and 2nd. This year they are actually being held at PPL Park in Philadelphia, and we are trying to sell tickets to this spectacular event.
For those who want to be involved, how can they get involved? Do you accept those in all skill levels?
Swift: Absolutely. Yeah, we go into these games with a squad of 22, but there are guys who have been coming out all semester purely for fitness reasons and for whatever reasons they want. They’ve been working hard and working their way into the starting lineup. Hopefully, people will start seeing the flyers we've been putting around campus. Practices are Monday, Wednesday, Friday from 6-8. Anyone can visit our website or Facebook page and get in touch with out recruitment directors and get involved.
Jeff McDevitt from over at City of Basketball Love reported yesterday that Greg Dotson of Germantown Academy told him he wants to play at Penn next year. But Dotson still needs to qualify academically. McDevitt says Dotson told him he needs to get a 24 on his ACT exam which will take this Saturday to qualify, and his current score is 22.
But a February Philly.com article focusing on Dotson's resilience in response to a left hip injury mentioned that Penn, Brown, Lafayette and Canisius were all recruiting Dotson "with passion."
The 6-foot-5 Dotson is known for his strong defense and solid wing play, averaging 16.2 points, 6.3 rebounds and 2.1 blocks per game in his senior 2012-13 campaign.
We are all going to bed hungry tonight. Not hungry for food; heavyweight rowers tend to be fed like kings on these trips. We are all hungry for another chance at Stanford in the morning. It is not often in this sport that you can be bested by a crew on one day, and have an opportunity to turn it around, learn from your race and beat them the next day, but we will have to do just that in the finals Sunday morning.
We were all up by 6 AM today, had a light breakfast at 6:30, and took off for the racecourse by 7:15. It’s all business on race day. We checked over the boat, stretched out, changed and met up as a team at 8. After some words of encouragement from coach Myhr and a team huddle around our coxswain, sophomore Lou Lombardi, we waded back into the waters of Mission Bay and took off on the warmup. After a solid warm up we pulled into the lane 2 stake boat with plenty of time to spare.
9 am: “Attention, GO.” It was a quick start and we dashed off the line even with Stanford and slightly up on Oregon State. By the end of our high strokes Stanford had a two-seat advantage and by the end of our settle they were up a half-length. We were a little tight when we settled and didn’t quite hit it together the way we needed to. By the 500, Stanford had slipped out to a ¾-length lead. They stayed 2-3 beats higher than us on the rating through the first thousand as we hammered our base at 36. After the 1000 we held on at a length down from Stanford and were able to push back into some deck overlap by the time we crossed the finish line at 5:54.92, 2.65 seconds behind the Stanford crew and 10.3 seconds ahead of Oregon State.
We know we can get faster tomorrow. We didn’t have a bad race today and Stanford showed they certainly are a quick crew, but our second race on this course will be better. #9 Stanford is wholly focused on beating No. 3 Cal tomorrow and even though we will be in unfavored lane 4, we will hopefully be able to slide past the Sycamores unnoticed, until it’s too late for them to respond.
Since we got off the water this morning our entire focus has been on preparing for the next contest tomorrow. Even with the temptations of sunny San Diego all around us, we were sure to shut it down, relax and recover. We had a quick breakfast, napped at the hotel, had a bigger breakfast, and napped again. We returned to the course at 5 PM for an afternoon swing row. As we swung up and down the race course, Lou talked us through the race plan from start to finish twice. We came off the water recovered from the morning’s battle and ready for war tomorrow.
Next up: We race in the Men’s Collegiate Varsity Final for the Copley Cup against Cal, Stanford, British Columbia, Gonzaga and Oregon State at 9:50 local time.
Presenting senior men's heavyweight rower Mitch Stein's perspective on the Quakers' trip to the San Diego Crew Classic. The team packed up its boats on a cross-country bus and...well I'll let Mitch explain the rest...
Friday, April 5, 8:32 PM San Diego, California
The team has settled back into our hotel rooms after a full day of preparing for our race in the morning. However, the real preparations for this trip began in September when our coach put the San Diego Crew Classic on the table as a potential reward for a strong fall performance. We would have to reach some markers at the Head of the Charles or Princeton Chase in October that we had been very far from in recent memory. After having our best finishes at the two regattas in over a decade, Coach Myhr was true to his word and signed us up for the storied west coast regatta in April. Thanks to the generous support of alum John Chatzky ’77, the cross-country trip for the varsity 8 was made possible.
The more immediate preparations began a week ago when we had to load our 8-man Filippi shell (the Ted Nash) and our 8 blades onto the SJU trailer that was traveling to Sane Diego. This trailer made the trek across the country during the week while we continued training and picking up boat speed at home on the Schuylkill. On Thursday at 2:40 pm the 11 of us (8 rowers, 1 coxswain, and 2 coaches) took off in coat and tie for the Philadelphia airport. We encountered the usual sideways looks and interesting conversations we generate whenever we travel as a group: “So you say you guys are on the Penn rolling team?” or “You look like a bunch of preppy yuppies.” We took it all in stride.
After the standard delays encountered at the illustrious Philadelphia airport and 5 hours on the plane, we finally touched down in San Diego around 10 o’clock local time. After dropping our things off at our hotel, we dashed to the closest In & Out and filled up on all things “animal-style” at the classic west coast burger joint. Due to our normal daily wake-up time of 6 am for practice back home, sleeping in with the time change was tough. We were all off to the racecourse by 8:30 and after finding the course, finding our trailer, unloading and re-rigging the Nash (which had luckily made it across the country safe and sound), we finally made our way to the beaches of Mission bay to take our first strokes in Pacific waters by 10 am.
Unlike all venues on the east coast where we launch into our boats off of docks, here in San Diego crews must wade out into the water and climb in once it’s deep enough. In spite the new experience of water-launching and the mess of crews coming in and out of the shore, we got off on our warm up. It was the first time on the course for everyone in the boat so the goal of this practice was just to shake off the trip and get familiar with the 2000 meter course. After starting in Sea World, the race takes a straight shot through Mission Bay. The trickiest part is the variable wind and tide currents that come out of two causeways next to the course: one in the first 300 meters and one just after the 1000 meter mark. Staying calm and handling variable conditions will be crucial in the weekend’s racing.
After a quality breakfast at the broken yolk, a solid nap, and another quick swing row of the course in the afternoon, we made our way to dinner at 6:30 with the generous alum that made the whole trip possible, John Chatzky. He shared some great stories about his time with Penn Crew in the '70s and why it is so important to stay involved with the team to this day. The team took the words of wisdom and inspiration from the former champion with us back to our rooms for the night.
Next up: we race Stanford and Oregon State in the morning at 9 am. The results of the morning race determine lanes for the final on Sunday morning.
Penn basketball coach Fran Dunphy removes his name from consideration for the La Salle head coaching job, choosing to return for his 13th season at the Palestra.
All signs pointed toward the legendary coach leaving, but what seemed like a perfect match turned out not to be.
Long-time La Salle head coach William "Speedy" Morris was forced to resign following eight consecutive losing seasons, and Dunphy was one of the primary targets.
Dunphy quickly became a popular pick to fill the Explorers' coaching vacancy due to his connections to La Salle. He graduated from the school in 1970 and served as an assistant first under Lefty Ervin and later under Morris.
Speculation that Dunphy would take the job increased as the Penn coach met with the athletic directors at La Salle on three occasions regarding the head coaching job. However, Dunphy announced on this day that he is removing his name from consideration for the vacant post in order to remain at Penn.
After turning down the job, Dunphy would remain at Penn until 2006, when he left to coach at Temple. He became the first coach ever to lead two different Big 5 programs. He was approached one more time by La Salle in 2004 to be their head coach, but he turned it down again.
Several Penn sports teams and athletes had opportunities to capture season-defining victories over the weekend. It's not every weekend that the Quakers take on a No. 1 ranked team, or that a freshman swimmer competes at the NCAA Championships. Those settings, combined with Ivy League openers for both the men's and women's tennis teams, as well as the baseball and softball squads, allowed for the Red and Blue to be well-represented this weekend. For coverage of these matchups and more, here's this week's edition of the Weekend Wrap:
Baseball: After a competitive non-conference schedule, the Penn baseball team kicked off its Ivy League season with a doubleheader sweep of Dartmouth on Saturday. Both games ended in 3-2 victories for the Quakers. On Sunday, the Red and Blue went up against Harvard, capturing the day's first game, 4-1, before the second game was eventually postponed due to rain. After play resumed Monday, the Crimson struck for three runs in the ninth, and handed Penn its first Ivy loss of 2013.
Men's Tennis: Kicking off Ivy League play on Saturday, the Penn men's tennis team fell to Princeton for the sixth straight season, 4-3. Although the matchup was tight throughout, the early loss of the doubles point ended up dooming the Quakers. After the Tigers took a 1-0 lead, the teams split all six singles matches, giving Princeton enough points to caputre the victory.
Men's Swimming: Freshman Chris Swanson was the only member of the Penn men's swimming team to be invited to participate in the NCAA Championships in Indianapolis over the weekend. Swanson competed in two events: the 500- and 1650-meter Freestyle races. Although Swanson was unable to top any of his career-best times in Indianapolis, he managed to finish 44th in the 500 free and 33rd in the 1650 free.
Women's Lacrosse: The No. 24 Penn women's lacrosse team traveled to College Park to face No. 1 Maryland on their home field on Saturday, and for the most part, they held their own. However, a rough start severely hampered the Quakers' chances against the Terps. After falling behind 4-0 early, the Red and Blue could not muster a comeback, and fell, 15-10. Freshman Iris Williamson led Penn with four goals.
Women's Tennis: The Penn women's tennis team also kicked off Ivy League play this weekend against Princeton. Despite taking the first doubles match, the Quakers dropped the next two, and wound up losing the matchup's opening point. The Tigers followed up their doubles point with five singles wins, and knocked off the Red and Blue, 6-1. Freshman Sonya Latycheva was the only Penn player to win her match.
Softball: The Penn softball team began its slate of Ancient Eight matchups with two doubleheaders against Harvard and Dartmouth this weekend. The Quakers made history in against the Crimson on Saturday, sweeping Harvard for the first time since 2003. Sophomore pitcher Alexis Borden also became Penn's all-time leader in strikeouts. The Red and Blue followed up Saturday's dominance with a split of two games with Dartmouth on Sunday.
Rowing: This weekend provided Penn's rowing teams with a variety of results. The men's rowing team captured a dominant victory over MIT on Saturday, earning a full sweep over the Explorers. On the women's side, however, the Red and Blue finished third out of three teams in the Connell Cup, losing to both Yale and Columbia, 21-18-6.
Men's Lacrosse: After dropping a heartbreaker against Cornell last weekend, the Penn men's lacrosse team looked to rebound against Ivy rival Yale on Saturday. Despite falling behind, 6-4, the Quakers made a valiant comeback in the final minutes of regulation. Sophomore attack Isaac Bock scored on an assist from senior Tim Schwalje with under two minutes to play in regulation, forcing overtime. The Red and Blue were unable to score in overtime, and a goal by Yale's Kirby Zdrill in the extra frame proved to be the difference as Penn fell, 7-6.
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