Search Results
Below are your search results. You can also try a Basic Search.
(11/02/99 10:00am)
Penn field hockey star Leah Bills will miss the rest of the season. Her hat trick landed the Penn field hockey team its first Ivy League win of the season. What happened after the game, however, was definitely not a first for the Quakers. Senior co-captain Leah Bills gave perhaps the greatest field hockey performance of her career. Bills, who leads the Quakers with nine goals and 19 points, scored not one or two, but all three of her team's goals in Penn's 3-2 victory at Yale this past Saturday. What will remain ingrained in her memory, however, is not the three goals but what happened at the final whistle. In the last seconds of the game, Yale continued to fight for one last shot on cage. With five seconds on the clock Penn won that fight and gained final possession. Bills fired the free hit down towards the opposing goal cage and the team knew it was all over. They had won their first Ivy game. Bills, jumping in the air, celebrated like any athlete. Unlike other athletes, however, she was punished in the worst way for her excitement. "She was very excited after we won, jumped in the air, fell and tore her Achilles' tendon," Penn coach Val Cloud said. "When the game was over, I ran off the field, the whole team was in a huddle, then I turn around and Leah was laying in the middle of the field with the trainer," said senior co-captain Maureen Flynn, who shattered her middle finger in an attempt to save a shot during the Penn State game. Although the news of Bills' injury is tragic, it is hardly surprising coming from the 1999 Penn field hockey team. Just last Thursday, one of the Quakers' star defenders, senior Brooke Jenkins, underwent her third career ACL surgery. Jenkins tore her left ACL when Stanford visited Penn two Saturdays ago. Prior to Jenkins' fall, Flynn, who plays with a brace from a former ACL surgery, shattered her finger. Flynn's misfortune, however has not impeded her from playing in the starting lineup. Just one game before Flynn's injury, junior defender Lauren Cornew broke her thumb in the Temple game. Cornew also continued to play but then broke another part of her thumb during the Yale game. Before Cornew, senior forward Courtney Martin broke her finger in the first game of the season. The list, sadly enough, goes on. By some sick twist of fate, the Quakers have been prone to a slew of injuries that has sidelined two of Penn's most threatening players. Like Jenkins' torn ACL, Bills' excruciating tear added her name to the Quakers' continually growing list of casualties. Bills' hat trick is certainly no comfort to the fact that her college career has been cut two games short. But if she had to pick one game on which to end her season, the Yale game would definitely have been a good one. It was the game that "got the big egg off the Ivy record," Cloud said. At the 12:11 mark, Bills opened Saturday's scoring with an unassisted goal. Determined not to land a last-place slot on the Ivy standings this week, the Elis rallied as Erin Arruda and Christine Anthony gave Yale a 2-1 lead with back-to-back goals in just under two minutes. The Elis sustained their lead for only a mere 30 seconds before Bills, assisted by senior defender Jen Murray and freshman Kylee Jakobowski, struck again. At the 4:28 mark the two teams were tied 2-2 and would remain so until the half. Whatever Cloud said during halftime, however, worked. The Quakers, despite being outshot 19-10 and giving Yale a 16-9 advantage in penalty corners, shut out the Elis in the second half. Junior goalie Alison Friedman ended the game with a remarkable 18 saves. The defensive line -- Murray, Cornew, junior Amna Nawaz and sophomore Monique Horshaw -- played exceptionally well. Although Yale possessed the ball more than Penn, the battle with the Quakers' defense was one that Yale just couldn't win. "Penn State had 21 shots on us and they scored eight goals," Flynn said. "To have 19 shots against you and only two go in, it shows how much pressure our defense put on Yale." In addition to the defense putting on an exceptional show, the attack capitalized perfectly on its corner opportunities. Murray put the final touches on the game when she, along with Jakobowski, assisted Bills' game-winning tally at 29:10 off a penalty corner. "What can I tell you, it was very exciting to win one," Cloud said. Traveling to West Chester today, the Quakers want to keep the excitement high. Today's game will be about "the goals we're going to get and the ones we're not going to give up," Cloud said. The Quakers biggest road block today will be playing on grass as opposed to their home turf field. Yale, however, was a grass facility and the Red and Blue fared well on the unfamiliar territory. According to Cloud, however, the Elis' field is in great shape, which makes for a fast turf-like game. West Chester's field, on the other hand, is not fast. "[The grass] is a definite advantage to [West Chester]," Cloud said. "But we should have some confidence, knowing that we won on grass." Perhaps the Quakers' confidence from Saturday will carry over into the last away game of the season. "I think we'll adjust fine to the grass," Flynn said. "It is still going to be a tough game. They are always a competitive game. Last year we won 1-0, the year before that we won 1-0 in overtime and my freshman year we lost 3-2." With Penn's high scorer undergoing surgery for her Achilles' tendon today and one of their top defenders recovering from her Thursday surgery, the Quakers must quickly adjust to the grass in order to fully concentrate on capitalizing on scoring and preventing the Golden Rams from netting a few in the cage. If nothing else, perhaps Cloud can use the unfortunate slew of injuries to inspire her team to win one for the sidelined seniors.
(10/29/99 9:00am)
The Quakers played tough defense in the first half before crumbling against No. 4 Penn State. Wednesday night at Bigler Field, two teams -- the Quakers and the Nittany Lions -- fought for intrastate bragging rights in field hockey. In a decisive Penn State victory, the teams played true to their nicknames as the fierce Lions obliterated the passive Quakers. Penn State (15-3) racked up eight goals in a shutout win. "It's not as bad as 8-0 sounds," Penn assistant coach Donna Mulhern said. Giving up eight goals cannot be comforting to a field hockey team; however, the final score does not paint an accurate picture of the entire game. Penn (3-11), a winless team in the Ivy League, obviously was the underdog going up against the No. 4 team in the nation. Nonetheless, they kept the Lions under control in the first half. Twenty minutes into the game, the score was still knotted at 0-0. It was not until Penn State's Tracey Larson, scored with 15:04 remaining in the half that Penn State took its first lead. The Nittany Lions then continued to dominate possession for the rest of the half but the Quakers held their ground and did not let another goal in the cage until just before halftime. Penn State's Kiley Kulina scored the first of her two goals to give the Nittany Lions a 2-0 lead at halftime. "Granted, [Penn State] was in our end the whole time but we were doing a good job of not giving them easy chances," Mulhern said. Perhaps the Red and Blue's defense burned out after playing practically 35 straight minutes of defense in the first half. Whatever the reason, from the get-go of the second half Penn State was hungry for goals. And the Quakers were helpless to suppress the Lions' vicious thirst for finding the cage. The second time around the Lions did not wait 20 minutes to open the scoring. Penn State was not on the field for more than five minutes when Larson struck again. Her second goal was quickly followed by a third and finally a fourth when she netted the final shot of the game with 12:37 remaining. Penn State continued the onslaught as Kulina scored again at 27:59, Robinson at 27:22 and Maegan Galie added one at 16:14. Larson then tallied the last two goals of her final home game. As Penn coach Val Cloud put it, "The dam burst," she said. Once it burst, five minutes into the second half, there was no way the Quakers could control it. Penn senior co-captain Leah Bills managed to put one shot on goal but that was the sole attempt for the Quakers. Penn State totaled 21 shots on cage. Perhaps the root of the Penn's tribulations rests in the historical origins of our school's mascot, the not-so-ferocious Quaker. However, the more probable place to trace the sources of the Red and Blue's current misfortune most likely started in the beginning of the season. Beginning with Courtney Martin breaking her hand in the season opener at St. Joe's, a string of injuries has hit the team. The most serious of these injuries was a season-ending torn ACL to senior defender Brooke Jenkins. The most recent blow in this unfortunate series of injuries occurred against the Nittany Lions when senior co-captain Maureen Flynn jumped in the cage to deflect a shot. Flynn made contact with the ball, but the ball split her finger and the goal counted. "There has been a calamity of injuries and situations," Cloud said. "We're hanging in there though." The Quakers have little to no choice but to hang in there with just three games left on the schedule. Tomorrow, the Quakers will face their final Ivy opponent of the season, Yale, which has just one Ivy League win. "Yale is a real must for us, we don't want to be the only ones at the bottom," Cloud said. "It is a possible win." To get that possible win, Penn must stop playing like passive Quakers and start eating the Elis alive.
(10/25/99 9:00am)
Tara Mounsey. Just call her the one-woman show. All four goals under the visitor's column on Franklin Field's scoreboard during Saturday morning's field hockey game were tallied by Mounsey, who led Brown to a 4-1 defeat of the Quakers. "[Mounsey] is a really strong player," Penn junior defender Lauren Cornew said. "We needed to deny her the ball because every time she got it she created something. We didn't do such a hot job of it." In fact, the junior tied her own school record for goals in a game. Mounsey, a neuroscience major from Concord, N.H., has also been named Ivy Player of the Week for the past two weeks. Impressively, in addition to that honor, she is also a standout defender on the Brown women's ice hockey team and was a member of the U.S. gold medal-winning team in the 1998 Olympics. But Mounsey's record number for goals tallied was not the only milestone the team reached this past weekend. The 14th-ranked Bears tied their school record for victories in a season with 11. But the fact that Brown (11-2, 5-0 Ivy League) has Mounsey on its roster did not guarantee an automatic championship team. Brown played a full 70 minutes of solid team field hockey to earn the victory. "They outplayed us and that's the bottom line," Penn coach Val Cloud said. "In order for us to have beaten [Brown] everything had to have gone right. Everybody had to have played well and the bounces had to have gone our way." The Quakers (3-10, 0-5) opened the game with an air of confidence about them and the bounces did seem to be going their way early on. Just 39 seconds in, senior Courtney Martin tallied her fifth goal of the season on an assist from senior co-captain Maureen Flynn. "Basically [the first goal by Penn] put us back on our heels a little bit," Brown coach Carolan Norris said. "But then it was the Tara Mounsey show. She's outstanding." With 19:01 remaining in the first half, Mounsey tied the game. Her second goal, on an assist from Kristen According, came just 55 seconds before halftime and gave Brown a 2-1 edge at the break from which Penn would never recover. "I thought the first half was played pretty even but they just took it to us after that," Cloud said. "We haven't been able to take charge of a game in the second half." In the beginning of the fall the Quakers struggled to put goals in the cage -- the Red and Blue tallied 10 goals in their first 10 games. But in the two games prior to Brown, against Temple and Bucknell, the Quakers made a concerted effort to shake this scoring impediment and tallied seven goals. Against Brown, however, the team reverted to its old ways and could not convert shots into goals. "When we got into the circle, we didn't capitalize on getting corners," freshman Kylee Jakobowski said. "We only got two corners and we should have gotten much more. We didn't use a lot of our little passes. We used the big ball all the time and we were passing to their sticks." The Bears held a 7-2 advantage in penalty corners and outshot the Quakers dramatically, 18-4. In addition, the Bears had two opportunities to score off penalty strokes but failed to convert these one-on-one situations with Penn's goalie into points on the scoreboard. Junior Alison Friedman and sophomore Gerrianne Kauffman combined to make 12 saves in net for the Quakers, while the Bears' Annie Owens had to make only three saves. To dominate the Red and Blue offensively, Brown kept the ball on the right side of the field. Although this tactic was also part of Penn's game plan, the Quakers couldn't "rise to the occasion," Cloud said. Brown's most obvious advantage over Penn was its speed and confidence. But it was the Quakers who started the game with that exact combination of speed and confidence. In pursuit of an upset, Penn opened the scoring, and as Martin got on the board less than a minute into the game, the team believed a surprise win could be in the headlines. Then something happened after Mounsey dribbled the ball right over the goal line with only 55 seconds remaining in the opening half. The initial winning attitude disappeared. "We scored first and then I don't know what happened," Cornew said. "When we come out and score first we need to continue taking it to them the entire game. We need to put 70 minutes of great hockey together."
(10/11/99 9:00am)
The Quakers continued to struggle on Friday in a loss to lowly Columbia but rebounded yesterday with a stunning win. Years after an athlete has hung up her jersey for the last time, a few games will remain in memory, every detail as sharp as if it happened yesterday. For the members of the Penn field hockey team, yesterday was one of those days. Penn was not supposed to beat William and Mary. The Quakers had lost six straight and few expected Penn to even put up a fight against a Tribe squad with a 7-5 record and battle-tested with close losses against four nationally ranked teams. After Columbia -- which had never before beaten an Ivy opponent in its history -- beat the Quakers 1-0 on Friday to hand Penn its sixth straight loss, the Quakers (2-7) certainly needed a boost. On Friday night in New York, junior goalkeeper Alison Friedman made 10 stops but the Quakers' offense sputtered and managed only four shots on the Columbia cage. After reaching that low point, however, the Quakers did something miraculous, shutting out the Tribe 1-0. Friedman reached the ultimate milestone that every goalie practices for -- her first career shutout. Thanks to excellent support from sophomore Monique Horshaw, senior Jen Murray, junior Lauren Cornew and senior co-captain Maureen Flynn, Friedman picked up the Quakers' first shutout since last November 3. "The defense stepped up a lot better today and went out with the ball better," senior defender Brooke Jenkins said. "Defensively we stepped up on them, didn't let them dribble too much with the ball and we were constantly pressuring them," Flynn said. "We got so many balls that were crucial because of our defense." The Quakers' noteworthy defense was complemented perfectly with a goal-hungry attack. In the first half, senior co-captain Leah Bills, assisted by Murray and senior Courtney Martin, netted the first and only goal of the game off a corner with 16:20 remaining before the half. For the entire season Penn has been struggling to draw fouls in the circle to create corners, essential for tallying points on the scoreboard. "We can't win if we don't score," Penn assistant coach Donna Mulhern said. "[Yesterday] we scored." From the get-go yesterday, the Red and Blue -- which had struggled in its previous six games, scoring just three goals -- "came out with a lot of fire and a lot of heart," Flynn said. The fire and heart that the players showed on the field converted into corners and shots on goal on the stat sheet. The first half was played perfectly even. Penn had four corners. William and Mary had four corners. Each goalie denied two shots and each attack attempted to net five goals on cage. The only difference was one of Penn's shots hit the back of the cage and none of William and Mary's shots made it past Friedman. "We played hard for the first 35 minutes and the momentum carried over [into the second half]," Martin said. Although Penn played on an even slate on both sides of the field in the first half, the Tribe started the second half of the contest determined to emerge with the win. William and Mary shot 10 times inside the circle, doubling its first-half attempts. The Tribe also created nine corner opportunities but failed to capitalize on any of them. Penn, on the other hand, took only one shot on the cage from inside the circle and zero penalty corners in the second half. Despite Penn's lack of challenges to the cage, the team controlled the midfield as a result of recognizing William and Mary's 3-2-3-2 formation, which also freed the sides of the field for the Red and Blue. Penn knew it would need an insurance goal in the second half to not let up and watch the talented Tribe come back to tie or win the contest. When the attack failed to capitalize, the defense and midfield raised their level of performance. William and Mary's nine returning starters -- all of whom remembered and hoped to repeat last year's 2-1 win over the Quakers -- refused to die. The previously struggling Quakers, meanwhile, had nothing to lose. "We played with guts today," Penn head coach Val Cloud said. And they did not let up for the whole afternoon. "We had no fear," Murray said. "We stayed on our player; stepped up to the ball and communicated a lot on the field, which makes a huge difference because we weren't scared. "We had nothing to lose, so now we just have to build up from the bottom. We could totally turn our season around right here. This game was big for us." Here is where the team wants to stay. While the Quakers can't rest on the glory of one game, the team hopes that a remarkable victory like this can turn the team around with eight games left.
(10/05/99 9:00am)
The Penn field hockey team lost its fifth game of the season Saturday. Maybe it's something in the food, or perhaps it's something in the water. Whatever the source, its symptoms have rapidly spread through three of Penn's fall sports teams. The most fatal symptom is the inability to put points on the scoreboard. The frustrated victims -- Penn field hockey, football and men's soccer -- have each been battling this impediment from the onset of the 1999 season. The field hockey team (1-5 overall, 0-2 Ivy League) has outscored only one opponent, Villanova, 4-2. Perhaps tonight, when the Quakers go up against America East contender Delaware at 7 p.m. on Franklin Field, they will double their win total. The team's inability to score, however, is not an indication of its ability to play competitively with its opponents. Saturday was one of the most devastating defeats for the team, points-wise. Of Penn's five losses, only the Harvard and Dartmouth games have had more than a one-goal differential. On Saturday, the Quakers fell 3-1 to Harvard, the 18th-ranked team in the nation. In short, the Red and Blue have been successful in stopping the majority of shots fired at their cage; Penn simply hasn't been able to put the ball in the net. Throughout the entire first half of the Penn-Harvard game, both teams were jinxed with the lack-of-scoring curse. Less than seven minutes into the second half, Penn's Courtney Martin broke the spell and opened the scoring, connecting off the Quakers' only corner opportunity of the game. Penn's lead did not last long, however. Ten minutes later, the Crimson's Kate Nagle answered Martin's goal to tie it. Two minutes after that, Harvard owned a 2-1 lead, as Dominique Kalil put in the go-ahead goal. Katie Turck assured Harvard's victory with 10:45 left when she scored the final goal of the game. Harvard dominated possession in the second half and the Penn defense played well to limit the Crimson to just three goals. Harvard attempted to score 14 times, while Penn amassed only six shots on the cage. There is an even more stark difference in statistics -- the Crimson took 17 penalty corners and Penn took one. The numbers do not lie; Harvard clearly dominated on offense. "I'm not disappointed in the way we play. I'm disappointed that we can't score more goals," Penn coach Val Cloud said. "We have to play smart, like creating corners. If we don't get corners, then we don't have that set up situation that is such an advantage to at least get shots on goal." Unfortunately, the Quakers were dealt a hand that did not prove to be nearly the offensive threat they expected. None of the team's top seven goal scorers from '98 graduated. However, only three are in top condition to pose a threat this season. Martin, the high scorer with nine goals last year, has a broken finger and has been playing with a cast that is custom molded to fit her stick. "Courtney is basically disabled," Cloud said. "She was our high scorer. She is just not as mobile with her hand as she used to be." Although Martin has played an integral role in the offense despite her injury, the cast has "obviously affected" her game, according to Cloud In addition to the partial loss of Martin, juniors Bess Freedlander -- the second high scorer of last season -- and Cindy Quinn are both not at Penn this season. And Princeton transfer Aviva Meerschwam transferred back to Princeton from Penn so that she could play with her twin sister Melanie. Out of the three remaining scoring threats from the 1998 season, two play in the midfield -- co-captains Leah Bills and Maureen Flynn. Midfielders pose the greatest menace to the opposing goalie during corners. Corners -- or a lack of corners -- have proved to be the most troublesome part of the Penn field hockey team's game plan. "If we had more corners our midfield would be up there," Cloud said. "We need to get more corners to get [the midfield] in the action." Besides getting the midfielders involved in the attack, the Quakers need to stick to their game plan of, "keeping [the other team] on their heels," sophomore Monique Horshaw said. If Penn sticks to that plan, the Quakers should give Delaware a tough contest. Looking at the stat sheet, the Blue Hens appear to be plagued by the same problem as Penn -- the inability to score. Delaware (3-7 overall, 0-2 America East) has been outscored by its opponents 15-24. There is a catch, however: five of the teams that Delaware lost to were ranked in the top 20 in the Division I poll. "[Delaware] has a tough schedule," Cloud said. "Their record is not good but they do have the capacity to score. It is going to be a tough game for us." Last season, the Quakers played perhaps their best game against a Delaware team that was then ranked seventh in the nation. In the Blue Hens' 11 previous games before meeting Penn, they shut out seven of their opponents and held all but one to one goal or less. The Quakers rose to the challenge, as Martin scored a hat trick. While the Red and Blue ultimately fell two goals short of victory, their efforts did not go unnoticed. This year the Blue Hens are a much different team. They lost five seniors from last year's squad. Of those players, three made the All-Mid-Atlantic Regional first team -- goalkeeper Kelly Adam, defender Jodi Byrd and forward Kelly Cawley. But Delaware does have 10 returning seniors who all have three years of playing experience. "[Delaware] is not as good as last year," Cloud said. "They they had a couple real go-getters, that [loss] hurts them, but they are still a good team." Penn needs one thing to get back in the win column: goals. "[We need] someone to step up and be more aggressive. Someone has to get the ball in the cage," Cloud said. "It's not like everyone is plowing over us. If we scored a few more we would be right in there." While a 1-5 record may hardly be noteworthy, the Quakers have been outscored by a total of just five goals. With any additional goal-scoring, the Penn field hockey team will be able to stop just being competitive and start picking up wins.
(09/17/99 9:00am)
It's not that the Penn field hockey team's heartbreaking 3-2 loss in overtime to St. Joseph's and its exhilarating 4-2 win over visiting Villanova were not important. It's just that for the Quakers, the real season begins on Sunday. At noon, the whistle will blow and Penn and Dartmouth will battle to open Ivy League play on Franklin Field. Every year, the Quakers open their Ivy schedule with the Big Green, and every year it is a hard fought battle. "It is going to be a competitive game that is important in the standings since it is both teams' first Ivy game," Penn forward Katie McCuen said. Penn (1-1) defeated the Big Green on Dartmouth's turf last season in a nail-biting 3-2 contest. The year before, however, Dartmouth came back from a 3-0 deficit to beat the Quakers 4-3 in the final minutes of the game. "It is a very bitter memory in the minds of those that remember that loss," Penn coach Val Cloud said. "They are very persistent." It is difficult to predict a team's success from individual games when the season is so young but Cloud does have some knowledge on the Big Green. "They've played two teams but it is hard to tell how they will be," she said. "I'm still waiting for a another scouting report to confirm what I do have on them. Like us, they have a lot of experienced players and they use a lot of passing. They also like to attack from right to left." Two very definite scoring and midfield threats for Dartmouth are senior twin sisters Lauren and Kristen Scopaz. With Kristen at the the center midfielder spot and the co-captain and leading scorer Lauren as the center forward, the duo could present problems for Penn. In Dartmouth's season opener against the University of Maine, Lauren Scopaz scored four goals and assisted on another to defeat Maine, 6-3. The Big Green could not duplicate that performance in the next game, falling 2-1 to Syracuse. Regardless of the records, however, something mysterious happens when two Ivy teams match up to open the regular season. With two teams as strong and feisty as Penn and Dartmouth, it will be anyone's game. "Any Ivy would be a tough opener, but I have a great deal of respect for [Dartmouth]. I never know what they are going to do," Cloud said. "[Dartmouth] is tough on offensive corners I have to prepare the team for that. Hurricane Floyd interrupted yesterday's opening preparation for the Big Green. So today Cloud will have to prepare her team for the Big Green's offensive corners and dominant right field play.
(06/03/99 9:00am)
The Quakers varsity eight placed sixth overall at IRAs last weekend. Garrett Miller, Penn's senior crew co-captain, coined it best when he told The Philadelphia Inquirer that his team would need a "religious experience" in order to defeat Pacific Athletic Conference champion California in the 97th annual Intercollegiate Rowing Association's National Regatta last Saturday. But there was no divine intervention at Cooper River's 2,000-meter course in Camden, N.J., last weekend when six heavyweight varsity eight crews -- Penn, Brown, Princeton, Wisconsin, Washington and California -- advanced to the Grand Final to do battle on the waters for the highest honor, a national championship. California, once referred to as the best team on the West Coast, is now regarded by many as the top crew squad in the nation after its boat -- with five oarsmen who have competed in the World Championship --crossed the finish line in a record time of 5:23.6 in the Grand Final. Undefeated Princeton, the Eastern Sprints champion, was predicted to be California's nemesis. The highly anticipated match-up of the top-seeded California versus the No. 2 seeded Princeton proved anti-climactic as the Tigers placed a disappointing third to barely qualify for a spot in the Grand Final in 5:42.2. Princeton had won the title last year in 5:31.1. California earned the No. 1 seeding after finishing first in the preliminary race in 5:30.1, a second faster then the 1998 champions' time. Penn rowed in 5:33.9 to gain the No. 2 seed in the Grand Final. During the three day regatta, Brown (5:33.9), Washington (5:35.8) and Wisconsin (5:37.8) all emerged in the top tier of rowers and earned a chance to compete for a national championship. Despite a rocky road to qualify for the Grand Final, the Tigers managed to redeem their disappointing qualifying time with a silver medal in the race in 5:26.3. Although the Penn rowers earned the No. 2 seed time in the qualifying races, they finished a disheartening sixth in 5:37.7. Washington brought home a bronze in 5:28.4 followed by Brown in 5:29.8 and Wisconsin in 5:32.5. California dispelled any question of weakness when they emerged by a boat-length at the 500-meter mark. At the 1,000-meter mark, the Golden Bears opened up water and weren't threatened by another boat until the last 500 meters. Princeton, who trailed California by four boats at the 1,000-meter mark, closed the gap between the East and the West as they rowed within five seats of California. The Tigers' second wind, however, did not suffice and the Golden Bears took the crown, defeating their eastern opponents by nearly an entire boat-length. Over 160 crews, ranging from non-varsity club teams to national powerhouses, attended the 97th IRA this past weekend. Penn qualified to race in the Grand Final after breaking away from Temple and Brown in a fast heat where California led by open water and took first. Although Penn showed its strength in the first races, the Quakers could not finish stronger in the final showdown. But, despite their last place finish in the final, the Penn rowers proved their crew could compete with the top boats from the East and West Coast. Penn's second heavyweight varsity eight-- who raced squads from the exact same schools as the first varsity eight -- also placed sixth. The crew was 5.7 seconds behind fifth place Wisconsin in the Grand Final in 5:55.9. California's second varsity eight followed in the first varsity's footsteps by bringing home a gold medal in 5:37.9. The Quakers' freshmen eight placed fifth in 5:49.5 in the Grand Final. Penn's top boat, the Master's eight, was comprised of Penn alumni. The boat finished second in the Grand Final in 6:43.4.
(06/01/99 9:00am)
Lower Merion High School '98 Ardmore, Pa. The Penn men's lacrosse team (6-8) fell three goals shy of a victory, 14-11, to seventh-ranked Delaware (13-2) on May 9. So the nine soon-to-be graduates did not leave the field with that one sweet memory. In 1997, head coach Marc Van Arsdale took the reins of a losing program. Three years later, Van Arsdale and the graduating seniors have built a foundation that is solid enough to foster the growth of a strong lacrosse tradition. The first two quarters of the Delaware game were a testament to just how sturdy a foundation has been built. At halftime, the sub-.500 Red and Blue were tied at five apiece with the America East champion Blue Hens. "Penn is an excellent squad," Delaware coach Bob Shillinglaw said. "Their record doesn't indicate anything." The Blue Hens opened the scoring as seniors John Grant and Dennis DeBusschere -- both of whom finished with four goals -- each found the net. Penn, anchored by co-captains Ziggy Majumdar on defense and Matt Schroeder in goal, took the hint and increased its level of defensive intensity. For the next eight minutes, the Quakers held the Blue Hens scoreless. Following the defensive leadership by the seniors, three underclassmen -- Todd Minerly, Scott Solow and Peter Scott -- each scored to give Penn a one goal lead. With 7:01 left in the third quarter, junior Pete Janney -- who led the Ivy League in overall points -- scored his first of three goals to tie the game at 7-7, the fifth tie of the game. But Hens senior Kevin Lavey stepped into the spotlight and broke open a close game when he scored three of the last four goals of the period to give Delaware a comfortable four-goal lead, 11-7. "The lead in the middle of the third quarter really helped us," Shillinglaw said. "Their guys never let down. I think they continued to fight but there was just a little more bounce to our step." The Hens' bounce turned into a leap when Grant, a Player of the Year candidate and the nation's top scorer, netted the last two goals of the game to increase his season point total to 96. "[Delaware] just had a little too much firepower," Van Arsdale said. "But it was a good game, the guys all played hard. The way we played today would have beaten a lot of people." After three devastating losses and a two-week break from competition, the Quakers played an intense, competitive game to end their rollercoaster season. The Red and Blue kicked off the year with the ultimate emotional high, easily defeating then-No. 9 North Carolina, 14-7. Penn had made its mark, and the tone was set for the rest of the season. Six games later the Red and Blue were still going strong, owning a 5-1 record. The Quakers' seventh game of the season proved that the number seven was no longer lucky. Penn lost an overtime heartbreaker to Ivy League foe Harvard by one goal. The next two games saw the Quakers plagued by the same luck, as their record soon fell to 5-4. On April 6, Penn matched up against Ivy rival Princeton. The game epitomized the Quakers' season, as they let a 7-3 lead slip through their fingers and lost 9-8. The defending national champion Tigers, meanwhile, went on to a perfect 6-0 Ivy season and yet another NCAA Tournament berth. Penn again tasted victory when it crushed Dartmouth, 12-2, on April 11 for its second Ivy win of the season. It turned out to be the last tally in the win column for the Quakers. The 1999 squad has experienced every high and low imaginable. They know how it feels to crush a nationally ranked team as an underdog. They know how painful a one-goal game hurts when you lose a lead to your biggest rival. For the graduating seniors, these are emotions they will never again experience. "I'm going to miss it a lot," Majumdar said. "Never again in your life can you do something like this."
(05/14/99 9:00am)
In its final game of the year, the Penn men's lacrosse team could not get past the Blue Hens. Nine Penn athletes walked onto Franklin Field with one wish, to win their last collegiate lacrosse game. Their wish wasn't granted. The Penn men's lacrosse team (6-8) fell three goals shy of a victory, 14-11, to seventh-ranked Delaware (13-2) last Saturday. So the nine soon-to-be graduates did not leave the field with that one sweet memory. In 1997, head coach Marc Van Arsdale took the reins of a losing program. Three years later, Van Arsdale and the graduating seniors have built a foundation that is solid enough to foster the growth of a strong lacrosse tradition. The first two quarters of last Saturday's game were a testament to just how sturdy a foundation has been built. At halftime, the sub-.500 Red and Blue were tied at five apiece with the America East champion Blue Hens. "Penn is an excellent squad," Delaware head coach Bob Shillinglaw said. "Their record doesn't indicate anything." The Blue Hens opened the scoring as seniors John Grant and Dennis DeBusschere -- both of whom finished with four goals -- each found the net. Penn, anchored by co-captains Ziggy Majumdar on defense and Matt Schroeder in goal, took the hint and increased its level of defensive intensity. For the next eight minutes, the Quakers held the Blue Hens scoreless. Following the defensive leadership by the seniors, three underclassmen -- Todd Minerly, Scott Solow and Peter Scott -- each scored to give Penn a one goal lead. With 7:01 left in the third quarter, junior Pete Janney -- who led the Ivy League in overall points scored with 53 -- netted his first of three goals to tie the game at 7-7, the fifth tie of the game. But Hens senior Kevin Lavey stepped into the spotlight and broke open a close game when he scored three of the last four goals of the period to give Delaware a comfortable four-goal lead, 11-7. "The lead in the middle of the third quarter really helped us," Shillinglaw said. "Their guys never let down. I think they continued to fight but there was just a little more bounce to our step." The Hens' bounce turned into a leap when Grant, a Player of the Year candidate and the nation's top scorer, netted the last two goals of the game to increase his season point total to 96. "[Delaware] just had a little too much firepower," Van Arsdale said. "But it was a good game, the guys all played hard. The way we played today would have beaten a lot of people." After three devastating losses and a two-week break from competition, the Quakers played an intense, competitive game to end their rollercoaster season. The Red and Blue kicked off the year with the ultimate emotional high, easily defeating then-No. 9 North Carolina, 14-7. Penn had made its mark, and the tone was set for the rest of the season. Six games later the Red and Blue were still going strong, the owners of a 5-1 record. The Quakers' seventh game of the season proved that the number seven was no longer lucky. Penn lost an overtime heartbreaker to Ivy League foe Harvard by one goal. The next two games saw the Quakers plagued by the same luck, as their record soon fell to 5-4. On April 6, Penn matched up against Ivy rival Princeton. The game epitomized the Quakers' season, as they let a 7-3 lead slip through their fingers and lost 9-8. The Tigers, meanwhile, went on to a perfect 6-0 Ivy season and yet another NCAA Tournament berth. Penn again tasted victory when it crushed Dartmouth, 12-2, on April 11 for its second Ivy win of the season. It turned out to be the last tally in the win column for the Quakers. The 1999 Quakers have experienced every high and low imaginable. They know how it feels to crush a nationally ranked team as an underdog. They know how painful a one-goal game hurts when you lose a lead to your biggest rival. For the graduating seniors, these are emotions they will never again experience. "I'm going to miss it a lot," Majumdar said. "Never again in your life can you do something like this."
(03/04/99 10:00am)
The Penn women's basketball team's 71-65 victory over Princeton dropped the Tigers into a tie for first place. The Penn women's basketball team had nothing to lose when it walked into Princeton's Jadwin Gymnasium last night for its final time under head coach Julie Soriero. Princeton, on the other hand, had a title to lose. With 2:41 remaining in the second half, sophomore Erin Ladley hit a clutch three point shot that put the Quakers up 62-60. The last 2 1/2 minutes of play were a gritty battle between two rivals and the Quakers proved to be the stronger fighters in their 71-65 victory. "We walked into this game knowing it was going to be a battle but also knowing we were going to win," said the Quakers' lone senior, co-captain Sue Van Stone. The end of the game proved to be a microcosm of the team's drive and desire in the second half. After Ladley hit a three-pointer to give Penn (12-14, 8-6 Ivy League) a two-point edge, Princeton (16-10, 12-2) answered back and tied the game at 2:27 with a layup. Twenty-four seconds later, Ladley once again came up big with a layup of her own. Ladley's clutch baskets accounted for five of her 13 total points, all of which were scored in the second half. The back-and-forth scoring continued until there was a mere 46 seconds remaining on the clock and Penn center Jessica Allen fouled out with Penn up 66-64. Princeton converted one of its two free throws to cut Penn's lead to one point. Allen headed to the bench, to be replaced by freshman Julie Epton, who entered the lineup after playing only six previous minutes. With 28 seconds remaining Epton grabbed a rebound, went up for a shot and was fouled. Epton, who had sunk 4-of-4 from the line earlier in the game, knew the game was over. "I knew I had to keep my composure and knock them down because we needed those points," Epton said. "Those free throws could have won or lost the game for us." After Princeton called timeout to ice her, she calmly knocked both down. With 28 seconds left the Quakers were up 68-65. The next play was the icing on the cake. With 19 seconds remaining, Princeton looked to set up its sharpshooter, Maggie Langlas. Langlas, a three-point threat, had already scored 27 points for her team on the strength of seven three-pointers. Van Stone recognized the screen that was set for Langlas, got around it and stole the ball. That play sealed the Tigers' fate and forced them into a playoff with Dartmouth for the Ivy title on Saturday at 7 p.m. at Yale's John J. Lee Amphitheater. "We like to be the spoilers," Van Stone said. This game illustrated how far the Quakers have come from earlier in the year. In the first round of Ivy competition on January 4, the Tigers bounced back from the Quakers' dominant regulation play to soundly defeat the Red and Blue 67-58 in overtime. "From day one in the season we never had a doubt in our minds that we could beat Princeton. That was our game in the Palestra, we just gave it away," Van Stone said. This time around, Penn was not about to give the game away. Although Penn had the mindset to end its season on a high note, the first half of the game did not end with a promising outlook. "In the first half Princeton did a really great job defending Mandy West and Diana Caramanico," Soriero said. "They were double teaming and even triple teaming Diana." Sophomore forward Caramanico and junior co-captain West have been Penn's go-to players throughout the season. Entering yesterday's face-off, the pair were Nos. 1 and 2 in Ivy League scoring and they led Penn yesterday with 16 points apiece. Princeton did its homework and denied both players the ball to hold them both below their scoring averages, but its tactics of doubling and tripling Penn's dominant players left three Red and Blue players open and hungry to help their team impede Princeton from clinching the Ivy title. "At halftime I said to the other kids on the team that they have got to step up," Soriero said. Those other players -- Van Stone, Ladley, Allen, Epton and sophomore Elizabeth Alexander -- did just that, stepping up and taking control of their team's fate. Although the Quakers -- who hoped to win the Ivies and earn a berth of their own in the NCAA Tournament -- did not wrap up their season according to plan, the team did not hang its heads. "Ending on this note is just great. It would have been greater, much greater, to go to the NCAA Tournament but in the position that we were in and the things that could have happened this is the best way to go out and the best way to send the coaches out," Epton said. "I expect to come back and cheer for us winning the championship next year," Van Stone said.
(02/25/99 10:00am)
Five foul shots. One trey plus one driving lay-up. A jump shot and an NBA three. Take any one of these combinations and the Penn women's basketball team could be tied for first place in the Ivy rankings. "The only thing that is between us and being at the top is five points," Penn coach Julie Soriero said. In the first half of Ivy play, Penn lost two heartbreakers to Princeton and Dartmouth. During winter break Penn and Princeton went head-to-head at the Palestra. The Quakers led in the last few minutes, but they lost their composure and the Tigers forced the Quakers to overtime with two points in the closing seconds of regulation. Princeton went on to a 67-58 victory. On the road the Red and Blue fell to the Big Green in the waning minutes, a continual theme in Penn's play this season. The score was 70-68 Dartmouth. If Penn did not give up two points to send the Princeton game into overtime, and if the Quakers had managed just three more points in the Dartmouth game, they could be at the top of the women's standings this week. Princeton (14-9, 9-2 Ivy League) leads the pack with Dartmouth (15-8, 8-3) following close behind and Brown (12-12, 7-5) in third. The Red and Blue (10-13, 6-5) sit in the middle of the field but are ready to be the spoilers of the league. "For men's basketball, other than the traditional powerhouses of Penn and Princeton, everyone is fighting for third place. In the women's there can theoretically be a four-way tie," Soriero commented. "There is so much parity in women's basketball. It exists from the top to the bottom. There is not a single team in our conference that is blowing everyone out." · One team, Dartmouth, did blow out No. 1 Princeton 64-40 last Friday. But the Big Green could not ride their winning momentum when they stepped into Penn's house. Penn wreaked havoc in the Palestra Saturday night when it shocked Dartmouth in a 80-77 overtime victory. Last week's upsets just go to show how anything can happen in the women's division. No team is in safe waters going into the last weekend of Ivy play. · It is a rarity, not to mention an emotional roller coaster, for a team to go through multiple milestones in one weekend's play. Last weekend the Quakers handled the pressure with poise and grace. Sophomore Diana Caramanico -- who leads the league in scoring at 22.9 per game, field goal percentage at 50.3 percent and rebounds 12.5 per contest -- made headlines with her 1,000th career point in the first few minutes of Friday night's Harvard game. The team continued to make headlines Saturday as Soriero coached her last game in the storied Palestra and went out with a bang. Her team soundly defeated Dartmouth in overtime, the first time the Quakers defeated the Big Green in five years. "Dartmouth came into the gym thinking that they were going to beat us and we could see their train of thought," sophomore Jessica Allen said. "Once we pulled ahead of them, we really started to get into it because we knew what it would mean to us and do to Dartmouth's egos if we won." The Quakers have lost one too many games in the last minutes of play this season but defeating the Big Green gave them the confidence to know that they could play with the best and beat them. "The Dartmouth game made me remember why I played basketball," Allen said. "When we ran into the middle of the court in a huddle jumping up and down, I thought, 'This is what it's all about.'"
(01/27/99 10:00am)
The Penn women's basketball team enters the heart of its Ivy season on a two-game win streak. The Penn women's basketball team never once fell behind the Black Knights of the United States Military Academy last night at the Palestra as the Quakers cruised to a 73-61 victory. With 12:20 remaining in the first half, junior co-captain Mandy West took a 13-foot running jump shot to set aflame the Quakers' perfectly executed transition game. West's jumper sparked a 19-2 run that led to a 22-point lead with 2:34 remaining in the first half. West scored 15 of the Quakers' 19 points during that surge. With a solid lead and Army go-to center Therese Kelley on the bench with two early fouls, Penn coach Julie Soriero was free to make substitutions, eventually giving every player minutes on the court. "We were up by 20 and had a lot of momentum with us. I wanted to give other players an opportunity to play," Soriero said. "They all work equally hard in practice." With Kelley riding the pine, "[the Knights] were in trouble," said Laura Worthing, Army's high scorer with 16 points. Despite having Kelley on the bench, the Knights managed to take advantage of the situation and turned up the pressure. With 2:34 remaining, Army went on an 11-0 run. The Knights' Christina Canelli, who had eight points on the night, scored a five-foot, buzzer-beating jumper to give her team the momentum going into the break. Riding its 11-point streak, the Knights (5-14) continued to close the gap as the Quakers' once-comfortable 22-point lead dissolved. Less than three minutes into the half, Army managed to shave Penn's lead to a mere three points. "After halftime we came onto the court flat, we didn't come in seriously whereas Army did and as a result they closed the gap and eventually brought the game to a tie," sophomore center Jessica Allen said. After a 20-second timeout, the Quakers (5-10) regrouped, determined to earn their first home court victory of the season. "We recognized that we had to respond," said Allen, who forced her teammates to run an extra sprint at practice by failing to meet Soriero's challenge of not fouling out of the game. The Red and Blue stepped back onto the court with a vengeance. Realizing the clichZ that defense breeds offense, Penn capitalized on a number of steals and a 49-41 edge on the boards to rebuild its lead over the Knights. Caramanico -- the team's leading scorer at 20 points per game -- and West assumed responsibility for regaining the team's lead. With 11:29 left in the half, West hit a driving layup that put the Quakers ahead 51-48. Twenty-five seconds later, she sunk two foul shots. Immediately following West's free throws, Caramanico sunk two of her own to extend the lead to 55-50. Surprisingly, Soriero responded by calling a timeout. "I've never seen [Coach Soriero] more happy," Caramanico said. "She called the timeout to tell us to keep playing as well as we were. "It was the first non-corrective time out that we've ever had. It was pretty exciting." Soriero's timeout helped Penn keep the momentum, as the Quakers continued to build their lead. Penn peaked at a 12-point lead, 73-61, to end the game and claim its fifth victory of the season. Despite the Knights' mid-game comeback, they never were able to completely thwart the Quakers' game. "A basketball game is 40 minutes, we played about 28 minutes of good basketball today," Army coach Sherri Abbey-Nowatzki said. "We started off OK, but then we started taking some quick shots and stopped executing. Eventually we just got frustrated. We obviously didn't execute. We shot 34.7 percent from the field." Never able to overtake the Quakers, Army found itself consistently in foul trouble. With 11:04 remaining in the second half, the Knights had seven team fouls and the Quakers were already in the bonus. Capitalizing on Army's foul trouble, Penn converted 22-of-29 opportunities from the charity stripe. With 22 team points from the line, Caramanico's double-double -- 25 points and 12 rebounds -- and 28 points from West, the Quakers put away Army and sealed their first home victory of the season.
(01/18/99 10:00am)
The Penn women's swimming team fell to Brown and Army. Exhaustion, the dominating theme of Saturday's Penn women's swimming tri-meet, caused the Quakers to fall to both Brown and Army at West Point's Crandall Pool. But with the Quakers' recent heavy workload -- including an intensive winter break spent training in Miami and January 9's loss-avenging, diver-less victory over neighboring Drexel -- it should come as no surprise that the team felt a little fatigued on Saturday. "Overall I think it was a really tough meet, just because we were swimming against two teams and everyone was pretty tired from the combination of training hard in Miami and at school and then the Drexel meet," sophomore Cathy Holland said. Brown (4-1, 3-0 Ivy League), which leads the Ivy ranks after wins over Harvard and Dartmouth, annihilated the Red and Blue (2-3, 0-3) by 124 points, 193-69. Brown -- which beat Penn last year 200-69 -- scored its 193 points on the strength of first-place finishes in the 200-meter relay medley, the 100-meter breast, 200-meter fly, 200-meter back, 200-meter breast, 500-meter free, 100-meter fly and the 200-meter individual medley. "Since I was a freshman, Brown has been a strong team which keeps improving each year," senior Lauren Ballough said. "When you are winning meets, it's easier to keep your attitude high." Army (4-5) took home five first- place finishes to defeat the Quakers, 179-115. "We knew Army was going to be a tough meet. They are always competitive," Ballough said. "The home meet worked to [Army's] advantage." With that advantage, Army took home first-place prizes in the 400-meter free relay, the 50-meter free, 100-meter free, 1,000-meter free and the 200-meter free. Penn's fatigue determined its finishes in the majority of the races. Ballough, a native of Zelienople, Pa., was the sole first-place winner for the Red and Blue, claiming the 100-meter back title with a time of 1:02.25. Sophomore Patty Walsham placed second in the 100-meter fly with a time of 1:01.76, while classmate Holland finished second in the 200-meter IM with a time of 2:16.47. The Quakers' performance on paper, however, was not indicative of the way they swam. "It wasn't that people swam poorly -- people were just tired," said Holland, whose younger sister will be a freshman swimmer at rival Princeton next season. "They were swimming hard, just not fast. Everyone tried their best." It's this attitude that has shaped the younger Penn squad. "As a team I don't think that we'll let this meet get us down; that's not really what we are about," said Holland, a native of Wilmington, Del. "It is not the feeling or the spirit that we've created." Despite the fact that the Quakers fell to two teams in one day, Ballough believed that the team's intensive training regimen will eventually pay off with another notch in the "W" column. "[We] proved at yet another meet that we can still get in and compete even though we are tired and have been training really hard," Ballough said.
(01/11/99 10:00am)
With 13.8 seconds remaining in the first Ivy League match-up of the new year, Princeton, the pre-season Ivy favorite, was down by one bucket, 55-53. Maggie Langlas, Princeton's high scorer of the game with 23 points and eight rebounds, drove to the basket with 6.6 seconds left on the clock. The score suddenly became 55-55. Penn had just one more chance for victory. Erin Ladley threw up the last jump shot of the game, but it was too late. The buzzer rang, ending regulation. During overtime Princeton owned the game. On January 4 at the Palestra, the Penn women's basketball team (2-8 overall, 0-1 Ivy League) opened its Ivy season against Princeton (1-0, 6-7). The two rivals went neck and neck throughout the entire game, but the Tigers rallied with 12 points in overtime to defeat the Quakers 67-58. Princeton, who came in with a three-game winning streak -- including a 2-0 mark at La Salle's First Union Classic on December 29-30 -- was ready for another close game. "We've had a lot of pressure situation games. Both games in the LaSalle tournament were close games that we've pulled out of in the end," Princeton coach Liz Feeley said, adding that, "we've been tested." Princeton did not solely rely on its ability to prevail in pressure situations. From the get-go the Tigers planned to "zone in on [Diana] Caramanico and [Mandy] West," Feeley said. With this game plan, the Tigers hoped to avoid a struggle at the end. Caramanico, Penn's power forward, and West, the team's point guard, are the marquee players of the Penn team. "Our team feels comfortable with the ball in their hands," Penn coach Julie Soriero said. Although the ball was in both players' hands for the majority of the game, neither player capitalized on her shot opportunities. Caramanico shot 4-for-23 from the field while West hit 4-for-17, including 0-for-5 from the three-point range. Despite Princeton's success in shutting down Caramanico and West, the Quakers gave the Tigers a struggle until the buzzer rang in regulation. However, Langlas' tying basket gave the visitors from Old Nassau the momentum they needed to prevail in overtime. Princeton's Hillary Reser opened the scoring in overtime with a 20-foot three pointer. That was the only field goal the Tigers scored out of their 12 points in overtime, as the other nine came courtesy of the charity stripe. "We put them away in overtime," said Reser, who scored five of her seven points in the extra session. "The momentum was with Princeton," Penn coach Julie Soriero said. "They came up big in overtime with foul shots." The Tigers were led by the dynamic duo of Langlas and junior Kate Thirolf. Thirolf had a double-double with 14 points and 18 rebounds. Despite Caramanico's shooting percentage, she led the Quakers with a double-double, 16 points and 15 rebounds. Penn center Jessica Allen also had a double-double, grabbing 11 points and 12 boards. West and Ladley both scored in double figures, netting 12 and 13 respectively for the Penn effort.
(12/09/98 10:00am)
The Penn men's basketball team is getting ready for the Nittany Lions and cavernous Bryce Jordan Arena. Something besides the weather has brought chills to Philadelphia's Big 5 men's basketball teams this December. That something is Penn State, a Pennsylvania team obviously not from the City of Brotherly Love. On December 1, Philly felt its first cold front. Temple, the No. 10 team in the nation at that time, fell one point short of victory to the Lions, 65-64. Four days later, Penn State anticipated its second Big 5 struggle. But perennial power Villanova proved to be a cakewalk, as the Lions dealt the Wildcats a 70-53 defeat -- the team's first win over 'Nova in seven tries. On December 12 Philadelphia has one last hope: the Penn Quakers. "[Philadelphia pride] is not the first and foremost thing in our minds," Penn coach Fran Dunphy said. "And yet we are from Philadelphia and part of a rich basketball tradition, so we would certainly like to do well. "But I can't imagine that Villanova and Temple thought, 'we have to do it for Philadelphia'." · Saturday's matchup marks the Quakers' first road trip of the season. Like their first two games against Kansas and Temple, the team will play amidst thousands of roaring fans. This time there is one difference, according to junior guard Matt Langel: "[the] crowd is not in our favor." There is little doubt that the 15,000 screaming fans at the Bryce Jordan Center will not be steadfast Penn supporters. The Quakers won't be able to look up and hear chants of "cheesesteaks" or "underrated" coming from the stands like they do in the Palestra. "It helps when we can get our fans into the game, just like it is going to help [Penn State] on Saturday," Dunphy said. With down-to-the-wire performances against Kansas and Temple, Penn brought its fans into the game. Those fans -- including Jeff Hatch, the 6'8", 250-pound, football defensive tackle who carries the 170-pound Quaker mascot on his shoulders to rally support -- will be the ones the Quakers will miss on the road. "It will be a great test for our guys to see how we handle a different crowd," Dunphy said. · Penn big man Geoff Owens will match up against Calvin Booth, one of the top players in the Big 10 conference. After averaging a double-double for the second straight week, the 6'11", 228-pound Booth took home Big 10 Men's Basketball Player of the Week honors for the first time. A native of Reynoldsburg, Ohio, Booth was Big 10 Defensive Player of the Year in 1997-98. The Nittany Lions' pivot man proved he was more than just a defensive threat in games against George Mason and Lehigh, in which he shot 50 percent from the field and 79 percent from the charity stripe. He also stole the ball twice, had two assists and blocked four shots. The four blocks moved Booth into third place on the Big 10's all-time list. "[Booth] is a very, very good shot blocker, but Geoff will do just fine," Dunphy said. "It will be one of those bigger tests [for Owens]." Owens, who did not play last season due to a medical condition, blocked 40 shots as a freshman -- the third-best single-season total in Penn history. While Owens has never had trouble blocking shots, his overall game is becoming increasingly more complete. He scored 18 points and grabbed 11 rebounds against Lehigh, outperforming Booth, who scored 14 points and pulled down nine boards in Penn State's 74-48 win over the Engineers on November 23. Although Owens pushed Lehigh around, he knows he will be playing under different circumstances on Saturday. "Lehigh was my best game offensively and all around," Owens said. "I got a lot of easy looks ? they weren't that strong inside. "I know [at Penn State] I won't get a lot of easy looks. I know I'm going to have to earn all of the points I get down low. I have to get 10 or 12 points and 10 or 12 rebounds to help us win the game." · Booth is far from being the Nittany Lions' only bright spot. His supporting cast justifies the team's 5-1 record -- with their only loss coming against Big 10 competitor Ohio State. A key member of the Penn State squad, sixth-year senior Dan Earl, was a former Penn recruit and a high school opponent of Langel. After losing two years to injuries, Earl joins the lineup once again. While back and knee injuries forced Earl to sit, he passed the time watching his younger brother Brian, Princeton's starting point guard. "I grew up with the Earl brothers. Dan and Brian are different players," Langel said. "Dan is a lot older, he knows the game real well, he's a real strong player," Earl's knowledge of the game came into play after Villanova held him to zero field goals in the first half. Earl came back with a vengeance in the second half, though, putting 10 points on the board. Joining Earl in double figures were Booth (21 points), Joe Crispin (14 points) and forward Titus Ivory (10 points). "[Penn State] has nice balance," Dunphy said. "They're not 5-1 for no reason."
(12/08/98 10:00am)
The Quakers took fourth in the La Salle Invitational out of eight teams, despite not having a single diver compete. Last weekend, eight Pennsylvania swimming teams stepped up to the blocks for the Philadelphia Invitational at La Salle's Hayman Center. The Penn women's swimming team finished in fourth place with 468.5 points. La Salle finished first, nearly doubling Penn's score with 809.5 points. The enormous point difference was the result of two factors. The Quakers, who swam "very, very well," according to Penn coach Kathy Lawlor-Gilbert, were not represented in the diving competition due to special circumstances. Therefore, when the combined scores of swimming and diving were tallied at the conclusion of the meet, there were no added points for Penn. Drexel, who placed second overall, finished with 485 points, only 16.5 points better than Penn. West Chester, who finished third, scored 13.5 more than the Quakers. If the scores were based solely on the swim meet, the Red and Blue would have finished with the silver medal. In addition to its lack of divers, Penn had intensive training for the entire week, instead of resting its squad. "The whole idea with this meet was that we were going to try to train through it and work on being able to step up and race people without having to rest," captain Jen Walsh said. On the other hand, "most of the other teams [including La Salle and Drexel] backed off in yardage and training," freshman Devin McGlynn said. But the swimmers and Lawlor-Gilbert felt they did well despite the lack of rest. "I was really happy with my results," McGlynn said. "They were definitely faster than I usually swim this time of year." McGlynn, who had an outstanding meet, according to Lawlor-Gilbert, finished third in the 200 meter freestyle with a time of 1:58.53. McGlynn is not the team's only freshman sensation. April Fletcher came in second in the 100 breaststroke with a time of 1:08.71, which qualified her for the ECAC. Three freshman -- Fletcher, McGlynn, and Adriana Pentz -- swam together along with junior Caroline Shipps to finish in seventh place with a time of 1:41.9 in the 200 m free relay. "The freshmen really stepped up for us," Walsh said. At the end of the two-day marathon meet, the entire Penn team was still swimming hard. "Everyone on the team did their part," Lawlor-Gilbert said. In the last race -- the 400m free relay -- McGlynn, Shipps, junior Michelle Anicone, and senior co-captain Lauren Hibbert finished third with a time of 3:41.97. The team finished behind only La Salle (3:35.91) and Drexel (3:38.19). "We knew it was going to be a hard day, but people hung in there and gave it everything they had," Walsh said.
(11/23/98 10:00am)
They started off the game on fire and never burned out. Seventy minutes later, following a 3-2 victory over Princeton in the NCAA Field Hockey Division I Championship game yesterday, Old Dominion walked off Franklin Field holding a National Championship trophy in its hands. It did not take long for Old Dominion's opening aggressive flurry to pay off yesterday. Just five minutes and 47 seconds into the first half, sophomore Marina DiGiocomo opened the scoring for the game off a corner shot assisted by senior back Mimi Smith. "Old Dominion came out on fire. [The first shot of the game] put us in a defensive mode. We had a little problem getting out of that," Princeton coach Beth Bozman said. Although Princeton did not begin to play its own offenisve game until the second half, with eight seniors on the squad, all 2,706 fans could sense that this game was not about to be a blowout. "[I told my team that Princeton] is going to come back to you and the game is not going to be over until the final whistle," Old Dominion coach Beth Anders said. Even before the whistle blew to end the first half, the Tigers proved Anders' prediction true. With a little over six minutes remaining in the half, Princeton came alive on the offense, forcing four corner opportunities -- the fourth ball sailing into the cage after three strikes. The Princeton band erupted, and the fans with bright orange ski hats and black and orange tiger tails wrapped around their heads began chanting. But suddenly it all stopped. The official blew her whistle and called back the goal. Princeton's captain, Kristy Hale, had touched the ball illegally with her foot. "You think you made a good play, and then it gets taken away from you," a frustrated Hale said. It did not take long for Hale to turn her frustration into a constructive play-- scoring just 9:30 into the second half. Determined not to let the Tigers tie the score at two with another goal, DiGiocomo put the game away when she scored her second goal of the game off a rebound from a corner deflection. Princeton managed to score once more, but failed to get the ball back on their offensive side when ODU went into a stall with a little over five minutes remaining in the second half. "I couldn't have asked for a better ending, and I couldn't have thought of a better team to take it with," Smith said with tears in her eyes. Anders, the Colonial Athletic Association's Coach of the Year, was credited by her team as being the force behind the win. Anders has led the Lady Monarchs to post season tournaments for each of the 17 seasons she has been coach. "The reason I chose ODU was because of Beth Anders and her tradition. I wanted to win a National Championship," junior goalkeeper Jamie Hill said. With a mark of 348 wins, 47 losses and seven ties, Anders has the most wins of any Division I field hockey coach. The secret to her success -- hard work. "Post season practice was so much work. We would run back to back miles and stadiums almost every day. But come November 22 it would pay off," DiGiocomo said.
(11/20/98 10:00am)
The NCAA field hockey Final Four will battle it out on Franklin Field. The most anticipated field hockey event of the year, the NCAA Division I Championship Tournament, is here. For the second time in the history of the NCAA Tournament, Penn hosts the most elite and prestigious collegiate field hockey event. Tonight, the top four teams in the nation -- Old Dominion (21-2), Virginia (18-4), Connecticut (19-3) and Princeton (16-2) -- will pay a visit to Franklin Field as they compete in the NCAA Division I semifinals. The winners of these semifinal matchups will meet at 1 p.m. Sunday to decide the national champion. At 5 p.m., the Old Dominion Monarchs take on the Virginia Cavaliers for the second consecutive year in the semifinals. At 7:30 p.m., the Connecticut Huskies match up against the Princeton Tigers. In second round play, Old Dominion took on reigning champs North Carolina. The Monarchs' 7-2 victory was its third defeat over North Carolina in the 1998 season. The Cavaliers, the only team in the Final Four who competed in the first round of tournament play, defeated Kent State, 4-2, and crushed the University of Maryland, 5-1, in the second round. Connecticut enters the semifinals for the first time in 15 years with a 3-0 shutout over Big East rival Boston College. Princeton, the Ivy League champion, earned its third consecutive trip to the Final Four with a 3-1 victory over Penn State. Old Dominion, the only team in the history of Division I field hockey to make an appearance in all 18 NCAA Tournaments, plays a controlled, slower paced game. The Lady Monarchs will be led by sophomore offensive threat Marina DiGiacomo. DiGiacomo, a two-time Colonial Athletic Association Player of the Year, is ranked second in the nation in points and leads her team with 27 goals, 23 assists and 77 points. Senior back, Mimi Smith, the CAA Defensive Player of the Year, leads the Monarchs on the defense. Along with DiGiacomo and Smith, the Lady Monarchs boast four other All-South Region players. On the opposing bench, Virginia head coach Missi Sanders teaches a fast-paced, "run-and-gun" style of play. "We are an extremely athletic team who uses our speed to our benefit," Sanders said. Leading the Cavaliers with their lightening speed will be Atlantic Coast Conference Player of the Year Lori Mastropietro, the all-time scoring leader in the ACC with 230 career points, and Meridith Thorpe, 1996 ACC Rookie of the Year. Meredith Elwell and all-time assist record holder at Virginia with 60, Michelle Vizzuso, will be key as well. Although both teams have earned numerous individual and team accolades, they play with different styles. According to Sanders that shouldn't pose a problem, "Although our styles are different, we are on the same level." "It will be quite a challenge," Old Dominion's head coach of 17 years, Beth Anders, said. "Both teams are evenly matched." The two other teams, Princeton and Connecticut, both lost their chance to win the 1997 title at the hands of North Carolina. In the final eight, North Carolina trumped the Huskies, 4-0, and preceded to drop Princeton, 4-3, in the Final Four. Princeton, one of the fastest teams in the Final Four, will come up against Connecticut -- a team that has 17 returning letterwinners who are hungry for a title. The Tigers, led by first team National Field Hockey Coaches Association Division I Mid-Atlantic Regional All-Americans Kristy Hale, Christine Hunsicker, Hilary Matson and Molly O'Malley, will use their speed and offensive threats to overcome the Huskies long-ball style of play. The Tigers' four first-team all-stars will be evenly matched with the Huskies' five first-team Mideast Regional All-Stars -- Danielle Vile, Amy Herz, Laura Klein, Carrie Mahoney and Katie Stephens.
(11/16/98 10:00am)
Standing in Saturday's football crowd of 14,000 roaring fans, Penn women's basketball center Jessica Allen, had four short words to say, "God, I'm so nervous." Her nervousness did not stem from a fear that the Crimson might make a fourth quarter comeback. Allen had another game on her mind. At 6 p.m., Allen would be starting in the Penn women's basketball season opener against a Big East powerhouse, the Villanova Wildcats. Penn, who had a non-losing record for the first time in the past seven years last season, is a young and energetic team. However, it is also a team who is not, according to last year's loss to Villanova (99-55), supposed to give the Wildcats a fight. After Saturday night's 54-64 loss, Penn proved it is not living in the past. At the sound of the whistle, forward Diana Caramanico overpowered Villanova's 6'3'' center Brandi Barnes as she tipped the jump ball to the Quakers point guard Erin Ladley. Villanova, however, was not going to give up so easily. Wildcats point guard Shanette Lee stole the ball from Ladley, but failed to convert the steal into points. At 18:57, Caramanico, after being fouled by Barnes, opened the scoring as she sunk two foul shots. Penn captain Sue Van Stone put up one more foul shot to help the Quakers sustain their early lead. After forcing 'Nova to have its second bad pass of the game, Ladley assisted Caramanico in a five foot jump shot to put Penn up 5-0. "I thought by the way we came out strong, we set the tone. We showed Villanova that we weren't going to back down," Ladley said. Penn did not back down. The Red and Blue never let Villanova take more than a two point lead throughout the entire first half. "We did a really good job of boxing out and pressuring them on the perimeter; they couldn't hit anything," Caramanico said. With 1:27 remaining in the first half, the score was tied 24-24, mainly due to Penn's aggressive defense. Determined to prove its superiority to its Big Five rival, Wildcats sophomore guard Mimi Riley drove in for a lay-up, putting Villanova on top 26-24. Penn, however, refused to run into the locker room at the close of the half knowing Villanova would have the lead. At the buzzer, Penn shooting guard Mandy West scored an unassisted 12 foot jumper to end the half in a tie, 26-26. The start of the second half began with similar play to the first half. Van Stone opened the scoring with a driving layup, but Lee answered back with a eight foot jump shot assisted by sophomore Lauren Pellicane. The back and forth scoring continued eight minutes into the second half until Villanova's Jenea Skeeters nailed a three point jump shot to put the Wildcats on top 39-34. After that play, the Quakers never regained the lead. "I was satisfied with the way we played overall, losing by 44 one year to losing by ten the next is a big accomplishment," Caramanico said. "But because we were within ten points, I feel that we should have won." Penn Coach Julie Soriero agreed with Caramanico, "I was satisfied with the effort, but I was not content with the result." Although Soriero was not content with the loss, she still felt that the game was a "good indicator of things to come."
(11/16/98 10:00am)
The Penn women's basketball team opens tomorrow against 'Nova The Penn women's basketball team's game against Villanova on Saturday will be a battle of biblical proportions: David versus Goliath. Villanova plays in one of the country's most elite leagues, the Big East, and they dealt the Quakers a resounding 99-55 defeat last season. But that game came early in the season when the predominantly freshman group was still adjusting to collegiate basketball. The Quakers open their 1998-'99 season against the Wildcats tomorrow at 6 p.m. at the Palestra. Experience is one area from which the Wildcats will draw their strength. With seven letterwinners and three starters returning from a team that went 19-10 and earned a bid to the WNIT, the Blue and White have proved they have what it takes to win. What it took, however, often involved two graduated scoring threats, co-captains Jenn Beisel and Jenny Higgins. Beisel was the team's leader on both ends of the floor, earning second team All-Big East honors. Higgins was second on the team in scoring and led the country with 100 three point field goals. Trying to fill the void will be senior point guard Shanette Lee who may be one of the most experienced guards in the entire Big East Conference, according to coach Harry Perretta. The Wildcats' roster also includes the dynamic duo of senior forward Jenn Sliwa (6-1) and junior forward Jenea Skeeters (5-11). Sliwa, one of the team's most versatile players, can shoot the three (netting 51 last season) and use power post moves. As a junior she averaged 9.7 points per game, 4.7 rebounds per game and 1.5 steals per game. Skeeters is also a scorer inside and outside. She ranked third in the Wildcat's team scorers list with 10.1 ppg. Both Sliwa and Skeeters played on the prestigious Big East/Nike All-star team this past summer, where Skeeters led the team in scoring with 11.4 ppg average. The three returning starters will be joined by Barndi Barnes (6-3), a sophomore transfer from the University of Maryland who will provide the Wildcats something they have not had in a while, size. While Villanova is traditionally strong, Penn is coming off its first non-losing season in seven years. Penn coach Julie Soriero led the young squad to a 13-13 record, which earned Soriero Philadelphia Big Five Coach of the Year honors. Last year's success was in large part due to freshman Diana Caramanico who the team looked to for leadership in both scoring (20.2 ppg) and rebounding (10.0 rpg). Caramanico finished 34th in the country in scoring, earned Ivy League Rookie of the Week honors 10 times and scored in double figures in 24 of the 26 games. Since Caramanico and the now-sophomore class' turning the program around, the Quakers are looking to build on last year's success. After Tuesday night's exhibition loss to Belarus, Soriero noticed one important fact that will make or break the Quakers chances this season. "We need to stay aggressive all 40 minutes," Soriero said. The Red and Blue went into the second half of the exhibition with a comfortable lead, but they seemed to relax and quickly fell behind. "As we relaxed, [Belarus] got momentum and after that we couldn't get the momentum back," Soriero said. Playing with intensity for 40 minutes will be key in tomorrow's match-up. The intensity must stem from co-captains Sue Van Stone and junior transfer Mandy West. Although she did not play for Penn last season due to NCAA transfer regulations, West earned All-Big East Rookie Team honors after her 1995-96 season at Boston College. Erin Ladley, the leader in the Quakers backcourt, will be the starting point guard this season. Ladley started the last 24 games of the season and finished fourth on the team in scoring. Two more sophomores, Caramanico and Jessica Allen will be controlling the boards down low. Allen played in every game last season and finished fifth on the team in rebounding and sixth in scoring. "We are looking for another successful year," Soriero said. "But we are still very young, so we'll expect growing pains early on in the season." The young Quakers may experience some growing pains, but their energy level will undoubtedly rise with the excitement and anticipation of the season opener. Although the Wildcats have more experience than the Quakers, Villanova's assistant coach Joe Mullaney believes the match-up "should be a fairly close game." "It is always a tough game when we play down there," Mullaney said. "It's also going to be a tough game because it's the first game, and they will be just as fired up as we are."
